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Cibrarp  of  Che  Cheoloc^ical  ^emmar^ 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 
ROBERT  ELLIOTT  SPEER 

BL  263  . S54  1923 
Smith,  Hay  Watson. 
Evolution  and 
Presbyterianism 


EFOL  UTION 

iiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiimiiiiiiiiiimmiiiiiiimiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmii 


AND 


-PRESS  TT. ERIANISM 

. . . . . 


BY 


HAY  WATSON  SMITH 

Pastor  Second  Presbyterian  Church 


LITTLE  ROCK,  ARKANSAS 


LITTLE  ROCK,  ARKANSAS 
ALLSOPP  AND  CHAPPLE 


JL  -t. "  "  ™  r-  c?  ^  ^  t  ^  —  _ 

I  J'  S^,  /  *f  ^ ^ 

BRINGING  LIGHT  FROM  SCOTLAND 

NO  CONVENTIONAL  BOOK  REVIEW  will  quite  suffice 
to  lay  the  emphasis  that  the  present  Presbyterian  moment 
requires  on  a  remarkable  pamphlet  which  has  just  been  pub¬ 
lished  by  its  author,  Rev.  Hay  Watson  Smith,  pastor  of  Sec¬ 
ond  Presbyterian  church  in  Little  Rock,  Arkansas.  It  makes 
an  attractive  piece  of  typography,  but  is  still  more  admirable 
as  a  sensible  and  timely  piece  of  brainwork.  The  title  is  “Evo¬ 
lution  and  Presbyterianism,”  and  the  object  of  the  brochure  is 
to  show  that  if  the  matter  be  judged  according  to  the  experi 
ence  of  the  Presbyterians  of  Scotland,  who  are  certainly  the 
original  and  authentic  breed  of  Presbyterians,  there  is  no  diffi¬ 
culty  at  all  about  interweaving  Presbyterianism  and  an  intelli¬ 
gent  acceptance  of  evolution  as  God’s  customary  creative 
method. 

This  object  the  booklet  accomplishes  conclusively.  Mr. 
Smith  has  brought  together,  beside  his  own  reasoning  in  the 
subject,  a  singularly  valuable  conspectus  of  utterances  and 
judgments  from  all  the  great  modern  leaders  of  Scottish  church 
life.  Every  one  of  them,  he  proves,  believed  or  believes  in 
evolution.  Also,  every  one  of  them  is  on  record  as  repudiating 
the  dogma  of  literal  inerrancy  in  the  inspired  Scriptures.  This 
list  notably  includes  the  late  Dr.  James  Orr,  whom  the  funda¬ 
mentalists  in  the  ETnited  States  have  strangely  adopted  as  their 
patron  saint,  although  he  was  a  typical  higher  critic  and  had 
no  patience  with  the  idea  that  the  letter  of  the  Bible  may 
be  opposed  as  a  barrier  to  the  teachings  of  modern  science. 

Mr.  Bryan,  if  he  reads  this  pamphlet,  will  find  himself  more 
of  a  heretic  in  Presbyterianism  than  the  evolutionists  whom  he 
so  savagely  denounces.  In  fact,  if  Mr.  Smith’s  illuminating 
pamphlet  could  have  general  and  really  candid  reading  in  the 
church,  it  would  rid  the  Presbyterian  denomination  in  this  coun¬ 
try  of  all  further  contention  over  this  fictitious  disagreement 
between  Genesis  and  science.  For  it  shows  clearly  that  our 
Presbyterian  cousins  in  Scotland  have  long  since  eliminated 
every  fear  that  science  can  spoil  the  Bible,  and  have  gone  for¬ 
ward  free  of  all  that  dread  in  joyful  fidelity  to  the  great  gospel 
which  the  Lord  Christ  gave  for  the  salvation  of  the  world. 

A  valuable  supplement  to  Mr.  Smith’s  work  is  a  much 
smaller  pamphlet  entitled  “Evolution  versus  Special  Creation,” 
written  by  Dr.  Horace  N.  Mateer,  professor  of  biology  in  the 
College  of  Wooster — a  name  of  Presbyterian  honor  in  a  stead¬ 
fast  Presbyterian  school.  Though  published  earlier — we  are 
happy  to  note  that  the  booklet  is  in  its  third  printing — the  argu¬ 
ment  of  Professor  Mateer  will  be  best  appreciated  by  those 
who  have  first  followed  Air.  Smith.  From  the  two  no  open- 
minded  man  will  conclude  that  Presbyterians  must  believe  in 
evolution,  but  all  except  the  inveterately  shut-minded  will  see 
that  Presbyterians  may  believe  in  evolution  without  the  slightest 
detriment  to  their  Presbyterianism — or  Christianity. 


EVOLUTION  and 
P  RE  SB  TTE  R  IAN  ISM 


DISTRIBUTED  BY 

ALLSOPP  &  CHAPPLE 

LITTLE  ROCK,  ARKANSAS 


v  s/?  ]■  s  l ,  5. ; 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESET! ER I  AN  ISM 


BY 

HAY  WATSON  SMITH 

PASTOR  SECOND  PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH 
LITTLE  ROCK,  ARKANSAS 


LITTLE  ROCK, 


ALLSOPP  &  CHAPPLE 


Press  of 

The  Democrat  Printing  and  Lithographing  Company 

Little  Rock,  Arkansas 

Copyright  Applied  For 


TO 

J.  R.  S. 


PREFACE 


This  pamphlet,  prepared  primarily  for  the  members 
of  the  Second  Presbyterian  Church,  is  the  outgrowth 
of  two  sermons  on  evolution  preached  some  months 
ago.  Its  purpose,  in  general,  is  to  bring  before 
thoughtful  Christian  people  certain  subjects  that  are 
seldom  given  a  fair  hearing  in  our  conservative  relig¬ 
ious  papers.  I  have  tried  to  make  every  part  of  the 
discussion  subserve  the  interests  of  progressive  relig¬ 
ious  thought  through  a  consideration  of  facts. 

In  arguing  for  evolution  and  its  compatibility  with 
Presbyterianism  I  have  avoided  everything  of  a  tech¬ 
nical  nature  and  have  appealed  only  to  considerations 
the  force  of  which  anyone  can  understand,  however 
slight  may  be  his  knowledge  of  either  evolution  or 
Presbyterianism. 

My  very  cordial  thanks  are  due  to  the  publishers 
whose  works  I  have,  with  their  permission,  quoted  so 
freely.  It  is  these  excerpts  that  give  to  this  discussion 
whatever  value  it  may  have.  I  am  also  indebted  to 
Prof.  William  Berryman  Scott,  of  Princeton  Univer¬ 
sity,  to  Dr.  Arthur  S.  Hoyt,  of  Auburn  Theological 
Seminary,  N.  Y.,  and  to  H.  Smith  Richardson,  Greens¬ 
boro,  N.  C.,  for  reading  the  manuscript,  exclusive  of 
the  appendixes.  Also  my  thanks  are  due  to  Miss  Wisner, 
secretary  of  the  Second  Church,  for  most  efficient  aid 
in  preparing  the  manuscript  for  the  press. 

Hay  Watson  Smith. 


Little  Rock,  Arkansas, 
December,  1922. 


Contents 


I.  The  Reasonableness  of  Accepting  the 
Theory  of  Evolution. 

II.  Why  the  Theory  is  Rejected. 

III.  An  Interesting  Parallel. 

IV.  Evolution  Compatible  with  Presbyte¬ 

rianism. 


V.  Two  Types  of  Presbyterianism. 


When  I  first  came  to  the  notion  ....  of  a  succession  of  extinction 
of  species,  and  creation  of  new  ones,  going  on  perpetually  now, 
and  through  an  indefinite  period  of  the  past,  and  to  continue  for 
ages  to  come,  all  in  accommodation  to  the  changes  which  must 
continue  in  the  inanimate  and  habitable  earth,  the  idea  struck 
me  as  the  grandest  which  I  had  ever  conceived,  so  far  as  regards 
the  attributes  of  the  Presiding  Mind. — From  a  letter  of  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  to  Sir  John  Herschel  (1836). 


I  asserted — and  I  repeat — that  a  man  has  no  reason  to  be 
ashamed  of  having  an  ape  for  his  grandfather.  If  there  were 
an  ancestor  whom  I  should  feel  ashamed  of  recalling,  it  would 
rather  be  a  man — a  man  of  restless  and  versatile  intellect — who, 
not  content  with  success  in  his  own  sphere  of  activity,  plunges 
into  scientific  questions  with  which  he  has  no  real  acquaintance, 
only  to  obscure  them  by  aimless  rhetoric,  and  distract  the  attention 
of  his  hearers  from  the  real  point  at  issue  by  eloquent  digressions 
and  skilled  appeals  to  religious  prejudice. — Thomas  Huxley  in 
his  famous  reply  to  Bishop  Wilberforce  (i860). 


Chapter  I. 


The  Reasonableness  of  Accepting  the  Theory 

of  Evolution. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  1 3 


CHAPTER  I. 

When  Mr.  Bryan  was  beginning  his  public  crusade 
against  evolution  he  wrote  to  a  Baptist  minister  in 
Kentucky:  “This  movement  will  sweep  the  country 
and  we  will  drive  Darwinism  from  our  schools.  The 
enemy  is  already  fighting.  The  agnostics  who  are 
undermining  the  faith  of  our  students  will  be  glad 
enough  to  teach  anything  the  people  want  taught 
when  the  people  speak  with  emphasis.”1  No  part  of 
this  prediction  has  been  fulfilled.  The  theory  of  evo¬ 
lution  is  still  taught  in  college  and  university,  and 
will  no  doubt  continue  to  be  taught  until  a  better 
theory  is  found  to  supplant  it. 

For  his  crusade  against  evolution,  no  friend  of 
science  need  bear  Mr.  Bryan  any  grudge.  It  is  simple 
truth  to  say  that  he  rendered  a  service  of  real  value 
to  science  and  to  the  people  of  the  country;  for  by 
reason  of  his  prominence  as  a  politician  and  the  high 
esteem  in  which  he  is  held  by  many  of  his  fellow- 
citizens,  Mr.  Bryan  caused  a  truly  great  subject  to 
become  a  topic  of  public  and  private  discussion  in 
every  part  of  the  land.  The  controversy  which  he 
provoked  sent  multitudes  of  inquirers  to  the  libraries 
and  book-stores  who  had  probably  never  before  read 
anything  of  a  serious  nature  on  evolution. 

Against  the  theory  of  evolution  Mr.  Bryan  brings 
a  great  many  indictments,  but  they  may  all  be  com¬ 
prised  under  two  heads: 

First,  that  the  theory  is  false,  having  no  foundation 
in  fact.  “There  is  not  one  fact  in  nature  that  supports 
the  Darwinian  hypothesis.”  “There  is  not  a  single 
fact  in  the  universe  that  can  be  cited  to  prove  that 
man  is  descended  from  the  lower  animals.”  “Darwin¬ 
ism  is  not  science  at  all;  it  is  guesses  strung  together.” 
“A  guess  with  nothing  in  the  universe  to  support  it.” 
“Not  only  groundless,  but  absurd.”2 

^Science,  Feb.  17,  1922.  The  Science  Press,  Utica,  N.  Y. 

2 The  Bible  and  its  Enemies,  p.  20.  In  His  Image,  pp.  yj y  <j4j  u6. 


i4  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


Secondly,  that  evolution  tends  to  irreligion  and  is 
anti-Christian.  “The  hypothesis  to  which  the  name 
of  Darwin  has  been  given ....  is  obscuring  God  and 
weakening  all  the  virtues  that  rest  upon  the  religious 
tie  between  God  and  man.”  “Darwinism  leads  to  a 
denial  of  God.”  “Darwinism  is  directly  antagonistic 
to  Christianity.”  “Darwinism  chills  the  spiritual 
nature  and  quenches  the  fire  of  religious  enthusiasm.” 
“The  evolutionist  guesses  himself  away  from  God.” 
“Darwin.  .  .  .tells  us  that  God  has  been  asleep  for  mil¬ 
lions  of  years.”  “Darwinism  puts  God  far  away.” 
“The  greatest  menace  to  the  Church  today.”1 

While  few  people  of  intelligence  would  go  to  such 
extremes  as  Mr.  Bryan  does  in  these  charges,  it  is 
nevertheless  true  that  multitudes  of  people,  among 
whom  are  some  of  our  best  Church  members,  agree 
with  Mr.  Bryan  in  his  opposition  to  evolution.  Al¬ 
though  such  opposition  is  natural,  it  is  very  unfortu¬ 
nate.  The  evidence  for  the  substantial  truth  of  the 
theory  of  evolution  is  very  strong,  and  there  is  nothing 
in  the  theory  that  contravenes  any  essential  doctrine 
of  the  Christian  religion.  At  the  same  time  it  is  no 
doubt  true  that  acceptance  of  the  theory  of  evolution 
will  require  the  recasting  of  some  parts  of  the  older 
theology — a  task  that  should  be  approached  with 
pleasure,  not  with  fear  and  foreboding. 

Evolution  is  of  two  kinds,  inorganic  and  organic. 
Inorganic  evolution  is  the  theory  that  the  physical 
universe  is  a  development  from  primal  matter  into 
the  complex  and  wonderful  structure  that  we  know 
today — a  development  extending  through  illimitable 
years  and  on  a  scale  inconceivably  vast.  With  inorganic 
evolution  we  are  not  concerned  in  this  discussion. 

Organic  evolution  has  to  do  with  life.  It  is  the 
theory  that  all  life  as  we  see  it  today  is  the  result  of 
a  gradual  unfolding  or  development  from  some  simple 
form  or  forms  of  primal  life — a  development  extending 


1/«  His  Image ,  pp.  88,  99,  no,  113,  103,  134.  The  Bible  and  Its  Enemies ,  p.  19. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  1 5 


through  many  millions  of  years.  As  expressed  by 
Darwin  in  the  last  paragraph  of  the  Origin  of  Species 
(1859):  “There  is  grandeur  in  this  view  of  life,  with 
its  several  powers,  having  been  originally  breathed  by 
the  Creator  into  a  few  forms  or  into  one;  and  that, 
whilst  this  planet  has  gone  cycling  on  according  to 
the  fixed  law  of  gravity,  from  so  simple  a  beginning 
endless  forms,  most  beautiful  and  most  wonderful,  have 
been,  and  are  being,  evolved.”1 

As  it  relates  to  the  human  species,  the  evolutionary 
theory  holds  that  man  is  a  primate,  and  that  all  the 
races  of  men  have  slowly  developed,  through  many 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  years,  from  some  unknown 
primate  ancestor.  It  is  not  held  by  evolutionists  that 
man  is  derived  from  any  lower  species  of  primate 
living  today. 

It  should  be  kept  in  mind  that  the  theory  of  evolu¬ 
tion,  organic  or  inorganic,  is  nothing  more  than  an 
attempt  to  explain  how  things  have  come  to  be  what 
they  are.  “It  is  not  a  power  or  a  principle;  it  is  a 
process — a  process  of  becoming.”  Every  scientist 
knows  that  beneath  or  within  all  the  innumerable 
changes  which  the  theory  of  evolution  attempts  to 
explain — whether  in  the  most  distant  nebula  revealed 
by  the  telescope  or  in  the  tiniest  cell  under  the  micro¬ 
scope — there  is  a  Spirit  or  Energy  the  secret  of  whose 
power  remains  inscrutable.  Evolution,  as  Elenry 
Drummond  said,  is  simply  “God’s  method  in  creation.” 

It  is  not  my  purpose  in  this  chapter  to  attempt  to 
prove,  by  direct  appeal  to  scientific  evidence,  the  truth 
of  the  evolutionary  theory.  That  would  require  a 
volume  and  could  be  satisfactorily  done  only  by  a 

JA  recent  definition:  “Organic  evolution  means  that  the  present  is  the  child  of 
the  past  and  the  parent  of  the  future.  It  is  not  a  power  or  a  principle;  it  is  a 
process — a  process  of  becoming.  It  means  that  the  present-day  animals  and  plants 
and  all  the  subtle  inter-relations  between  them  have  arisen  in  a  natural  knowable 
way  from  a  preceding  state  of  affairs  on  the  whole  somewhat  simpler,  and  that 
again  from  forms  and  inter-relations  simpler  still,  and  so  on  backwards  and  back¬ 
wards  for  millions  of  years  till  we  lose  all  clues  in  the  thick  mist  that  hangs  over 
life  s  beginnings.”  ( The  Outline  of  Science ,  by  J.  Arthur  Thompson,  vol.  I.,  p. 
56.  G.  P.  Putnam’s  Sons.  1922). 


1 6  EVOLUTION  AND  PRESBYTERIANISM 


specialist.  My  purpose  is  to  show  that  on  general 
grounds  it  is  reasonable  to  accept  the  theory — far  more 
reasonable  than  to  reject  it;  and  it  should  be  remem¬ 
bered  that  it  is  on  just  such  general  grounds  that  the 
knowledge  that  most  of  us  possess  must  always  rest. 
Four  general  considerations  may  be  given  that  should 
dispose  an  unprejudiced  mind  favorably  towards  the 
theory. 

i.  The  first  of  these  considerations  is  that  the 
theory  is  accepted  by  all  the  men  who  best  know  the 
facts.  The  students  of  life — its  origin,  development, 
structure,  functions,  and  distribution — are  known  as 
biologists,  and  the  biologists  of  the  world  are  practi¬ 
cally  unanimous  in  their  acceptance  of  the  fact  of 
evolution.1  “Almost  the  only  zoologist,”  says  Prof. 
Scott,  “of  recognized  standing  who  has  taken  a  pro¬ 
nounced  and  positive  position  against  the  theory,  is 

Professor  Fleischmann,  of  Erlangen . This  opinion 

of  Professor  Fleischmann’s  stands  almost  entirely  alone 
in  modern  biological  literature.”2  Professor  E.  G. 
Conklin,  of  the  department  of  biology  in  Princeton 
University,  writes  (1922) :  “No  biological  investigator 
in  the  world  has  abandoned  belief  in  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  so  far  as  I  am  aware.  I  have  repeatedly 
challenged  the  opponents  of  evolution  to  name  a  single 
working  biologist  in  the  world  today  who  does  not 
accept  the  truth  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  and  not 
one  has  ever  met  this  challenge  so  far  as  I  am  aware.” 
So  the  men  who  have  made  a  life-long  study  of  the 
facts  of  biology  are  practically  unanimous  in  accepting 
the  theory  of  evolution  as  offering  the  best  explanation 
of  those  facts. 

Concerning  this  unanimity  three  things  may  be  said: 

First,  it  by  no  means  extends  to  all  the  details  of 

1  Biology  is  the  most  comprehensive  branch  of  science.  It  includes  zoology,  bot¬ 
any,  physiology,  anatomy,  cytology,  embryology,  and  a  number  of  allied  sciences 

2  The  Theory  of  Evolution,  by  William  Berryman  Scott,  Ph.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor 
of  Geology  and  Paleontology  in  Princeton  University,  pp.  I  and  2.  1917.  Re¬ 
printed  by  permission  of  the  Macmillan  Co. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  1 7 


the  theory.  Biologists  differ  widely  as  to  the  way  in 
which  evolution  operates  and  as  to  its  causes,  and 
this  difference  has  given  rise  to  the  belief  that  they 
differ  as  to  the  fact  of  evolution.  Such  is  not  the  case. 
A  scientist  may  accept  only  in  part  Darwin’s  expla¬ 
nation  of  the  theory  of  evolution,  or  may  confess 

ignorance  of  how  this  or  that  factor  works,  or  may 
— ’  .  .  .  . 

doubt  whether  the  origin  of  species  has  been  satis¬ 
factorily  explained,  and  yet  be  a  convinced  evolutionist. 
Just  what  part  in  evolution  is  played  by  such  factors 
as  variability,  the  struggle  for  existence,  natural  selec¬ 
tion,  and  heredity,  is  a  matter  about  which  biologists 
may  well  differ.  In  spite  of  all  our  knowledge  life 
remains  a  thing  of  mystery,  and  concerning  mystery 
there  is  always  difference  of  opinion. 

A  good  illustration  of  the  differences  among  biologists 
as  to  the  modus  operandi  of  evolution,  and  of  the 
mistaken  inferences  drawn  therefrom  by  the  public, 
is  found  in  the  address  of  Professor  William  Bateson, 
the  eminent  English  biologist,  delivered  in  Toronto 
last  December  (1921)  before  the  American  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science.  Professor  Bateson 
admitted  how  little  we  know  of  some  of  the  processes 
of  evolution,  and  on  the  ground  of  this  admission  he 
was  widely  quoted,  not  only  as  having  expressed  doubts 
as  to  the  truth  of  evolution,  but  as  having  rejected  the 
theory  outright.  Yet  here  is  what  he  says  in  the 
closing  paragraph  of  his  address:  “I  have  put  before 
you  very  frankly  the  considerations  which  have  made 
us  agnostic  as  to  the  actual  mode  and  processes  of 
evolution.  When  such  confessions  are  made  the  ene¬ 
mies  of  science  see  their  chance.  If  we  cannot  declare 
here  and  now  how  species  arose,  they  will  obligingly 
offer  us  the  solutions  with  which  obscurantism  is  sat¬ 
isfied.  Let  us  then  proclaim  in  precise  and  unmistak¬ 
able  language  that  our  faith  in  evolution  is  unshaken. 
Every  available  line  of  argument  converges  on  this 

inevitable  conclusion.  The  obscurantist  has  nothing 


1 8  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


to  suggest  which  is  worth  a  moment’s  attention.  The 

difficulties  which  weigh  upon  the  professional  biologist 

need  not  trouble  the  layman.  Our  doubts  are  not  as 

✓ 

to  the  reality  or  truth  of  evolution,  but  as  to  the  origin 
of  species ,  a  technical,  almost  domestic,  problem.  Any 
day  that  mystery  may  be  solved.  The  discoveries  of 
the  last  twenty-live  years  enable  us  for  the  first  time 
to  discuss  these  questions  intelligently  and  on  a  basis 
of  fact.  That  synthesis  will  follow  on  analysis,  we  do 
not  and  cannot  doubt.” *  1 

Secondly,  the  unanimity  with  which  scientists  ac¬ 
cept  the  theory  of  evolution  must  not  be  understood 
to  mean  that  they  look  upon  the  theory  as  an  un¬ 
changeable  dogma.  Such  an  attitude  would  be  essen¬ 
tially  unscientific.  Strictly  speaking  there  are  no 
dogmas  in  science.  “The  spirit  of  science,”  says  Prof. 
Conklin,  “is  freedom  to  seek  and  to  find  truth;  freedom 
to  hold  and  to  teach  any  view  for  which  there  is 
rational  evidence;  recognition  that  natural  knowledge 
is  incomplete  and  subject  to  revision,  and  that  there 
is  no  legitimate  compulsion  in  science  except  the  com¬ 
pulsion  of  evidence.”  2  And  Prof.  Curtis:  “The  very 
nature  of  scientific  truth  makes  it  clear  that  the  open 
mind  must  be  maintained,  even  in  matters  which  the 
scientist  believes  to  have  been  firmly  established.”3 
The  theory  of  evolution  is  therefore  not  a  dogma  with 
scientists.  There  is  no  biologist  who  would  not  be 
glad  to  discover  facts  that  would  justify  the  modifica¬ 
tion  of  the  theory,  for  it  is  by  such  discoveries  that 
truth  is  advanced  and  that  scientists  win  recognition. 
If  the  theory  of  evolution  is  ever  shown,  by  evidence 
at  present  unavailable,  to  be  a  mistaken  hypothesis, 
every  lover  of  truth  will  discard  the  theory. 

Thirdly,  for  the  average  man  such  unanimity  of 

1  Science,  Jan.  20,  1922. 

1  The  Direction  oj  Human  Evolution ,  by  Edwin  Grant  Conklin,  Professor  of  Biology 
in  Princeton  University,  Preface.  Charles  Scribner’s  Sons.  1921. 

*  Science  and  Human  Affairs ,  by  Winterton  C.  Curtis,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Zoology 

in  the  University  of  Missouri,  p.  300.  Harcourt  Brace  and  Co.  1922. 


EVOL UEION  and  PRESB YE ERIANISM  1 9 


opinion  would,  in  almost  any  other  branch  of  science, 
be  conclusive  of  the  probable  truth  of  any  theory 
advanced.  If  mathematicians,  chemists,  astronomers, 
physicists,  civil  engineers,  surgeons,  and  so  forth,  were 
entirely  agreed  as  to  any  theory  in  their  respective 
fields,  the  theory  would  go  unquestioned  by  the  general 
public.  The  average  man  does  not  deny  the  theory 
of  relativity,  the  theory  of  geyser  action,  the  chro¬ 
mosome  theory,  or  the  Mendelian  theory.  He  does 
not  deny  that  the  sun  is  92,000,000  miles  away,  or 
that  an  eclipse  or  a  comet  will  appear  as  predicted.  He 
is  not  in  such  possession  of  the  facts  as  to  enable  him 
intelligently  to  deny  any  of  these  things.  He  accepts 
them,  as  he  does  thousands  of  other  facts,  on  the  word 
of  those  who  have  qualified  themselves  to  speak  with 
some  measure  of  authority.  Why,  then,  do  men  reject 
a  theory  in  the  field  of  biology  upon  which  all  biologists 
are  agreed?  Answers  to  this  question  will  be  sub¬ 
mitted  later. 

Of  course  it  is  true  that  specialists  in  any  department 
of  knowledge  may  be  mistaken,  but  their  mistakes  will 
be  discovered  and  corrected  by  themselves  or  by  better 
specialists.  The  appeal  must  always  be  from  knowl¬ 
edge  to  fuller  knowledge,  not  from  knowledge  to  ig¬ 
norance.  Where  scientific  knowledge  is  sought  we  are 
compelled  to  rely  upon  specialists,  even  though  we 
fully  realize  their  fallibility. 

2.  The  second  consideration  favoring  evolution  is 
the  fact  that  the  evidence  for  the  theory  comes  from 
so  many  different  fields  of  knowledge.  While  the 
evolutionary  theory  cannot  be  demonstrated  with  the 
certainty  of  a  geometrical  theorem,  any  more  than 
can  a  score  of  other  accepted  theories,  yet  the  con¬ 
vergence  of  so  many  lines  of  argument  makes  it  almost 
impossible  for  an  unprejudiced  mind  to  doubt  its  truth. 

Professor  Scott  says:  “What  gives  great  weight  to 
the  evidence  in  support  of  the  evolutionary  theory  is 
the  harmonious  concurrence  of  so  many  independent 


20  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


lines  of  testimony.  Whether  we  deal  with  classifica¬ 
tion,  or  the  results  of  domestication,  with  comparative 
anatomy,  embryology,  blood  tests,  palaeontology, 
geographical  distribution,  or  experimental  investiga¬ 
tion,  we  find  in  every  instance  that  the  simplest,  most 
satisfactory  and  least  forced  interpretation  is  that 
which  is  offered  by  the  theory  of  evolution.  The 
probability  rises  in  geometrical  ratio  with  each  ad¬ 
ditional,  independent  class  of  evidence.”  1 

More  fully,  Professor  Newman:  “The  task  of  the 
student  of  organic  evolution  is  to  gather  all  of  the 
traces  of  past  changes  both  in  living  creatures  today 
and  in  the  preserved  remains  of  creatures  of  the  remote 
past.  A  collection  of  traces  of  evolution  involves  many 
apparently  unrelated  bodies  of  phenomena.  There 
are  evidences  of  evolution  in  the  grouping  of  animals 
into  phyla,  classes,  orders,  families,  genera,  species, 
varieties,  and  races;  in  the  homologies  that  exist  in 
general  structure  and  in  particular  organs  between 
different  groups  of  animals  and  plants;  in  the  orderly 
process  of  ontogeny  or  embryonic  development  of  the 
individual;  in  actual  blood  relationship,  based  upon 
chemical  reactions;  on  the  succession  of  extinct  animals 
and  plants  found  as  fossils  imbedded  in  the  geologic 
strata;  in  the  present  geographical  distribution  of  the 
various  groups  of  animals  and  plants,  in  the  light  of 
data  derived  from  a  study  of  geological  changes;  and 
finally,  in  experimental  evolution,  which  involves  the 
observation  under  experimental  control  of  changes  in 
organisms  and  the  origin  of  new  varieties  or  elementarv 
species. 

“The  nature  of  the  proof  of  organic  evolution,  then, 
is  this:  that,  using  the  concept  of  organic  evolution 
as  a  working  hypothesis  it  has  been  possible  to  ration¬ 
alize  and  render  intelligible  a  vast  array  of  observed 
phenomena,  the  real  facts  upon  which  evolution  rests. 
Thus  classification  (taxonomy),  comparative  anatomy, 


*  The  Theory  oj  Evolution ,  p.  168.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  Macmillan  Co. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  2 1 


embryology,  palaeontology,  zoogeography  and  phyto¬ 
geography,  serology,  genetics,  become  consistent  and 
orderly  sciences  when  based  upon  evolutionary  found¬ 
ations,  and  when  viewed  in  any  other  way  they  are 
thrown  into  the  utmost  confusion.  There  is  no  other 
generalization  known  to  man  which  is  of  the  least 
value  in  giving  these  bodies  of  fact  any  sort  of  scien¬ 
tific  coherence  and  unity.  In  other  words,  the  work- 
ing  hypothesis  works  and  is  therefore  acceptable  as 
truth  until  overthrown  by  a  more  workable  hypothesis. 
Not  only  does  the  hypothesis  work,  but,  with  the 
steady  accumulation  of  further  facts,  the  weight  of 
evidence  is  now  so  great  that  it  overcomes  all  intelli¬ 
gent  opposition  by  its  sheer  mass.”  1 

As  already  stated,  it  lies  beyond  the  scope  of  this 
pamphlet  to  give  the  positive  evidence  from  these 
various  branches  of  biological  science.  This  can  be 
done  only  by  specialists,  and  it  has  been  done  in  scores 
of  works  on  evolution  from  the  time  of  Darwin  to  the 
present  day.  To  these  the  reader  is  referred.  2 

3.  Again,  evolution  is  the  only  hypothesis  that 
gives,  or  even  pretends  to  give,  an  answer  to  the 
innumerable  questions  raised  in  the  study  of  the  phe¬ 
nomena  of  life.  As  already  quoted,  Professor  Bateson 
says,  “The  obscurantist  has  nothing  to  suggest  which  is 
worth  a  moment’s  attention;”  and  Professor  Newman, 
“There  is  no  other  generalization  known  to  man  which 
is  of  the  least  value  in  giving  these  bodies  of  fact  any 
sort  of  scientific  coherence  and  unity.”  So  Prof.  Cur- 
tis:  “It  is  now  regarded  by  competent  scientists  as 
the  only  rational  explanation  of  an  overwhelming  mass 

:  Readings  in  Evolution ,  Genetics ,  and  Eugenics,  by  Horatio  Hackett  Newman, 
Ph.  D.,  Professor  of  Zoology  in  the  University  of  Chicago,  pp.  58,  ^9.  The  Uni¬ 
versity  of  Chicago  Press.  1921. 

2The  two  books  last  quoted  are  very  satisfactory  discussions  of  the  subject, and 
are  in  a  way  supplementary.  Professor  Scott’s  book  is  a  brief  and  authoritative 
presentation  of  the  theory  of  evolution  “with  special  reference  to  the  evidence 
upon  which  it  is  founded.”  Professor  Newman’s  book,  prefaced  by  an  historical 
sketch  of  the  evolutionary  idea,  is  a  very  interesting  compilation,  with  editorial 
comments,  of  excerpts  from  the  ablest  writers  on  evolution. 


22  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


of  facts.  Its  strength  lies  in  the  extent  to  which  it 
gives  meaning  to  so  many  phenomena  that  would  be 
meaningless  without  such  an  hypothesis.”  1  Such  is  the 
testimony  of  all  biologists. 

Those  who  put  Genesis  against  evolution — that  is, 
creation  by  immediate  divine  command  against 
creation  by  gradual  evolutionary  processes — should 
remember  that  the  older  theory  leaves  us  without  an 
answer  to  one  in  a  hundred  of  the  countless  questions 
raised  in  biological  science.  To  take  a  single  class  of 
illustrations:  On  the  older  theory,  what  plausible 
explanation  can  be  given  of  such  vestigial  and  rudi¬ 
mentary  structures  as  the  vermiform  appendix  in  man, 
the  remnants  of  legs  in  certain  whales  and  snakes, 
teeth  in  certain  embryonic  birds,  and  so  forth?  These 
phenomena  are  “meaningless  without  such  an  hypoth¬ 
esis”  as  evolution. 

4.  Lastly,  the  theory  of  evolution  as  a  working 
hypothesis  has  stood  the  test  of  more  than  sixty  years, 
and  there  has  never  been  a  time  when  it  was  so  widely 
accepted  and  so  influential  as  it  is  today.  During  that 
period  it  has  been  denounced  and  ridiculed  as  only 
one  other  theory  ever  was,  yet  it  has  steadily  won  its 
way;  and  during  that  period  a  vast  mass  of  biological 
phenomena,  entirely  unknown  to  Darwin,  has  come 
to  light,  all  of  which  only  adds  new  confirmation  to 
the  theory.  Now  the  sure  test  of  every  hypothesis 
put  forth  by  man,  whether  in  science  or  politics  or 
religion,  is  time  and  the  growth  of  knowledge.  Evo¬ 
lution  is  standing  the  test. 

These,  then,  are  the  general  considerations  that 
make  it  reasonable  to  accept  the  theory  of  evolution: 
It  is  accepted  by  all  the  men  who  are  best  acquainted 
with  the  facts;  it  is  supported  by  evidence  drawn  from 
many  fields,  all  of  which  is  harmonious  and  convergent; 
there  is  no  other  theory  that  even  pretends  to  explain 
the  infinitely  varied  phenomena  of  life,  past  and 


1  Science  and  Human  Affairs,  p.  181. 


EVOL  UP  ION  and  PRESS Y T ERIANISM  2  ; 

v_' 


present;  and  it  has  stood  the  test  of  time  with  its 
immense  increase  of  knowledge.  Of  few  other  theories, 
that  remain  theories  at  all,  can  more  be  said. 


Chapter  II. 


Whv  the  Theory  is  Rejected. 


26  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


The  love  of  truth  is  the  great  moral  law,  in  conformity  with 
which  curiosity  must  be  regulated — it  is  the  morality  of  the  in¬ 
tellectual  man,  being  to  the  understanding  what  sincerity  is  to 
the  heart. 

There  is  no  principle  which  needs  to  be  more  strenuously  in¬ 
culcated,  than  that  evidence  alone  should  be  the  measure  of  assent. 
In  reference  to  this  principle,  the  whole  discipline  of  the  under¬ 
standing  must  be  conducted.  Our  anxiety  should  be  to  guard 
against  all  the  influences  which  preclude  the  access  of  evidence, 
incapacitate  us  to  appreciate  its  value,  and  give  false  measures 
of  judgment,  instead  of  the  natural  and  legitimate  laws  of  belief. 

Evidence,  and  that  alone,  He  has  made  it  obligatory  on  our 
understandings  to  pursue;  and  whatever  opinions  we  hold  that 
are  not  the  offspring  of  evidence,  that  have  come  to  us  merely 
from  education,  authority,  custom,  or  passion,  however  true  and 
valuable  they  may  be  in  themselves,  are  not  held  by  us  in  the 
spirit  of  truth. — James  Henley  Thornwell. 


EVOL UP  ION  and  PRESS Y T ERIANISM  27 


CHAPTER  II. 

Here  an  interesting  question  may  be  asked:  It  the 
evidence  for  the  theory  of  evolution  is  so  strong,  why 
do  so  many  people  reject  the  theory,  often  with  indig¬ 
nation  and  ridicule?  To  that  question  at  least  three 
answers  may  be  suggested:  ignorance  ot  the  fact,  ante¬ 
cedent  religious  belief,  and  fear. 

1.  “Without  knowledge  of  the  facts,”  says  Matthew 
Arnold,  “no  clearness  or  fairness  of  mind  can  in  any 
study  do  anything.”  Many  who  oppose  the  theory 
of  evolution  have  read  little  or  nothing  of  an  author- 
itive  kind  on  the  subject,  and  are  therefore  ignorant 
of  the  facts.  The  great  majority  of  men  and  women 
have  little  time  for  scientific  reading.  Besides,  most 
books  on  evolution  are  of  a  more  or  less  technical 
character,  taking  the  average  reader  into  many  fields 
of  knowledge  with  which  he  is  wholly  unfamiliar.  An 
appreciative  understanding,  therefore,  of  such  discus¬ 
sions  requires  an  amount  of  leisure,  a  scientific  interest, 
a  range  of  knowledge,  and  a  mental  discipline  that  few 
possess. 

2.  But  ignorance  of  the  tacts  will  not  ot  itself 
account  for  opposition  to  the  evolutionary  theory, 
since,  as  already  shown,  in  most  fields  of  science  the 
overwhelming  majority  of  us  unhesitatingly  accept 
tacts  and  theories  while  remaining  in  ignorance  of 
the  evidence  on  which  they  rest.  The  chief  cause  of 
opposition  to  the  theory  of  evolution  is  inherited 
religious  beliet.  The  theory  is  in  direct  conflict  with 
what  most  of  us  were  taught  in  the  home  and  Sunday 
School  as  God’s  revealed  truth.  From  the  religious 
standpoint,  therefore,  the  case  for  evolution  is  pre¬ 
judged;  and  prejudgment  easily  passes  into  prejudice — 
an  attitude  which  either  refuses  to  consider  opposing 
evidence  at  all,  or  else  is  incapable  of  giving  it  a  just 
evaluation. 

It  is  important  to  understand  the  exact  nature  of 


28  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


4 


the  religious  belief  here  spoken  of — the  belief  that 
makes  it  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  for  a  certain  class 
of  people  to  accept  the  theory  of  evolution. 

The  Bible  is  rightly  looked  upon  by  practically  all 
Christian  people  as  containing  a  revelation  of  the  mind 
and  will  of  God  for  man’s  belief  and  conduct.  Described 
as  the  word  of  God,  a  not  unnatural  assumption  is  that 
the  Bible  must  be  absolutely  true  and  right  in  all  its 
teaching,  whether  of  theology,  science,  history,  or 
ethics.  In  other  words  the  Scriptures,  by  virtue  of 
their  divine  origin,  are  to  be  accepted  as  infallible  and 
inerrant  in  every  detail. 

If  this  theory  of  the  Bible  is  correct,  then  to  question 
anything  in  the  Bible  is  intellectually  presumptuous 
and  morally  wrong.  It  is  to  set  up  the  finite  against 
the  infinite,  ignorance  against  omniscience,  man’s  will 
against  God’s  will.  Men  who  are  guilty  of  such  pre¬ 
sumption  as  this  will  naturally  be  looked  upon,  by 
adherents  of  the  theory  of  inerrancy,  as  dangerous. 
Thev  will  be  denounced  as  enemies  of  the  Bible  and 

J 

of  true  religion.  They  will  be  accused  of  undermining 
the  foundations. 

Wherever  this  conception  of  the  Bible  prevails  the 
rejection  of  the  evolutionary  theory  is  a  foregone 
conclusion.  The  reasoning  is  logical.  It  may  be 
reduced  to  a  syllogism.  Stated  from  the  intellectual 
side:  The  Bible  is  the  inerrant  truth  of  God;  evolu¬ 
tion  contradicts  the  Bible;  therefore  evolution  is  not 
true.  Stated  from  the  moral  and  religious  side:  The 
Bible  in  every  part  reveals  the  righteous  will  of  God; 
evolution  is  at  variance  with  the  Bible;  therefore 
evolution  is  at  variance  with  the  will  of  God.  And 
so  it  is  affirmed  that  evolution  is  not  only  untrue,  but 
atheistic  and  anti-Christian. 

Now  the  validity  of  this  conclusion  depends  entirely 
upon  the  truth  of  the  major  premise:  namely,  that  the 
Bible  throughout  is  an  inerrant  revelation  of  truth 
and  righteousness  in  every  detail  of  theology,  science, 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  i9 


history,  and  ethics.  Since  this  view  of  the  Bible  is 
fully  discussed  in  chapter  IV.,  it  is  sufficient  to  say 
here  that  if  the  Bible  had  been  penned  by  God,  or 
dictated  by  Him  to  an  amanuensis,  such  a  conception 
of  it  might  have  some  justification.  As  a  matter  oi 
fact  the  Scriptures  came  in  no  such  way.  If  they 
contain  a  revelation  from  God,  that  revelation  came 
through  men,  and  it  is  conditioned  by  the  character 
and  enlightenment  of  its  human  authors.  The  Bible 
is  both  human  and  divine.  It  is  inspired,  but  it  is 
not  inerrant. 

While  this  theory  of  inerrancy  is  giving  place  to  a 
truer  view  of  inspiration,  it  is  doing  so  with  the  slow¬ 
ness  that  marks  all  changes  in  sincere  religious  convic¬ 
tion,  and  it  is  still  the  greatest  obstacle  to  the  accept¬ 
ance  of  the  theory  of  evolution. 

3.  Another  reason  why  many  people  do  not  believe, 
or  openly  avow  a  belief,  in  evolution  is  fear.  This  tear 
may  manifest  itself  in  at  least  two  ways: 

First,  by  disposing  men  to  avoid  an  honest  investi¬ 
gation  of  the  subject.  They  are  afraid  to  investigate. 
To  do  so  would  be  like  leaving  safe  and  familiar  waters 
and  embarking  upon  seas  whose  distant  shores  they 
cannot  discern.  They  have  no  desire  to  “launch  out 
into  the  deep.”  They  have  faith,  but  it  is  not  of  that 
virile  and  adventurous  kind.  One  can  fully  understand 
and  sympathize  with  this  attitude,  while  at  the  same 
time  seeing  clearly  that  it  is  the  mark  of  immature  and 
timid  minds,  and  that  if  such  an  attitude  were  universal, 
universal  stagnation  would  ensue. 

Secondly,  fear  of  consequences  may  dispose  men  to 
conceal,  from  the  public  at  least,  their  belief  in  evolu¬ 
tion  after  such  belief  has  been  clearly  formed.  The 
president  oi  an  educational  institution,  the  pastor  of 
a  conservative  Church,  a  professor  in  a  theological 
seminary  or  in  a  denominational  college,  the  editor 
of  a  religious  newspaper,  and  others,  may  conceal  their 
views  through  fear  of  losing  favor,  patronage,  position, 


3o  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


or  of  being  adversely  criticised.  Such  fear  of  conse¬ 
quences  is  not  necessarily  ignoble.  Every  man  must 
judge  for  himself  where  caution  passes  into  cowardice. 

These  seem  to  be  the  influences  that  keep  men  from 
accepting  the  theory  of  evolution:  ignorance  of  the 
facts,  inherited  religious  belief,  and  fear. 


Chapter  III. 


Interesting  Parallel. 


32  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


On  hearing  Galileo’s  fate,  Descartes  [1596-1650]  burned  a  book 
he  had  written,  On  the  Worlds  lest  he,  too,  get  into  trouble.  From 
that  time  down  to  the  days  of  Huxley  and  John  Fiske  the  struggle 
has  continued,  and  still  continues — the  Three  Hundred  Years’ 
War  for  intellectual  freedom  in  dealing  with  natural  phenomena. 
It  has  been  a  conflict  against  ignorance,  tradition,  and  vested 
interests  in  church  and  university,  with  all  that  preposterous 
invective  and  cruel  misrepresentation  which  characterize  the 
fight  against  new  and  critical  ideas.  Those  who  cried  out  against 
scientific  discoveries  did  so  in  the  name  of  God,  of  man’s  dignity, 
and  of  holy  religion  and  morality.  Finally,  however,  it  has  come 
about  that  our  instruction  in  the  natural  sciences  is  tolerably  free; 
although  there  are  still  large  bodies  of  organized  religious  be¬ 
lievers  who  are  hotly  opposed  to  some  of  the  more  fundamental 
findings  of  biology. — James  Harvey  Robinson. 


EVOL UTION  and  PRESB YEERJANISM  33 


CHAPTER  III. 

A  glance  at  what  was  taking  place  in  the  two  or  three 
generations  following  the  year  1543  will  give  back¬ 
ground  to  this  discussion. 

In  1543  Copernicus,  a  Polish  astronomer,  published 
a  book  entitled,  Ehe  Revolutions  of  the  Heavenly  Bodies. 
The  theory  advanced  in  this  book  was  the  most  revo- 
lutionarv  that  had  ever  entered  into  the  mind  of  man. 
It  radicallv  changed  man’s  conception  of  the  universe. 
As  far  back  as  human  history  went,  men  had  believed 
that  the  earth  was  stationary  and  that  the  sun  and 
stars,  like  the  moon,  revolved  around  it;  and  this  view 
was  inwrought  into  the  warp  and  woof  of  religious 
faith  and  doctrine.  Copernicus  propounded  the  view 
that  the  earth  is  not  stationary,  but  rotates  on  its 
axis,  and,  with  the  other  planets,  revolves  around  the 
sun.  For  the  geocentric  he  substituted  the  helio- 
centric  theory. 

The  new  view  met  with  such  a  storm  of  criticism 
as  has  never  been  accorded  any  other  theory  in  the 
history  oi  human  thought.  It  was  universally  de¬ 
nounced  not  only  as  false  and  absurd,  but  as  unscript- 
ural  and  atheistic.  Of  the  chorus  of  denunciation 
that  went  up  from  all  parts  of  Christendom,  and  that 
has  lasted  to  our  own  day,  only  a  few  notes  can  be 
given : 

Martin  Luther:  “This  fool  [Copernicus]  wishes  to 
reverse  the  entire  science  of  astronomy;  but  sacred 
Scripture  tells  us  that  Joshua  commanded  the  sun  to 
stand  still,  and  not  the  earth.” 

Philipp  Melanchthon:  “The  eyes  are  witnesses  that 
the  heavens  revolve  in  the  space  of  twenty-four  hours 
....  It  is  the  part  of  a  good  mind  to  accept  the  truth  as 
revealed  by  God  and  to  acquiesce  in  it.” 

John  Calvin:  “Who  will  venture  to  place  the  au¬ 
thority  of  Copernicus  above  that  of  the  Holy  Spirit?” 

Father  Caccini:  “Geometrv  is  of  the  devil .  .  .  .math- 

J 


34  EVOL  U  n  ON  and  PRESB  Y  T E  RIAN  I SM 


ematicians  should  be  banished  as  the  authors  of  all 
heresies.” 

Kasper  Peucer:  “Absurd  and  unfit  to  be  introduced 
into  the  schools.” 

Father  Lorini:  “Atheistic.” 

Cardinal  Bellarmin:  “His  pretended  discovery  viti¬ 
ates  the  whole  Christian  plan  of  salvation.” 

The  Catholic  Congregation  of  the  Index:  “The 
doctrine  of  the  double  motion  of  the  earth  about  its 
axis  and  about  the  sun  is  false,  and  entirely  contrary 
to  Holy  Scripture.” 

Fromundus:  “Sacred  Scripture  fights  against  the 
Copernicans.” 

The  Catholic  Theologians  of  the  Inquisition  at 
Rome:  “The  first  proposition,  that  the  sun  is  the 
center  and  does  not  revolve  about  the  earth,  is  foolish, 
absurd,  false  in  theology,  and  heretical,  because  ex¬ 
pressly  contrary  to  Holy  Scripture;  the  second  prop¬ 
osition,  that  the  earth  is  not  the  center  but  revolves 
about  the  sun,  is  absurd,  false  in  philosophy,  and,  from 
a  theological  point  of  view  at  least,  opposed  to  the 
true  faith.” 

Dr.  John  Owen :  “Delusive  and  arbitrary  hypothesis, 
contrary  to  Scripture.” 

John  Wesley:  The  new  ideas  “tend  toward  infidelity.”1 

Such  denunciation  ought  not  to  cause  the  least 
surprise.  The  new  theory  seemed  to  outrage  common 
sense,  for  could  not  one  see  the  sun  and  stars  rise  and 
set?  It  looked  absurd,  for  would  not  people  drop  off 
the  earth  if  it  rotated?  2  And  it  was  opposed  to  Script¬ 
ure,  for  the  Bible  everwhere  assumes  the  geocentric 
theory.  There  is  not  a  word  in  it  that  suggests  the 
Copernican  view.  Yet  Copernicus  and  Galileo  and 
Kepler  were  right.  They,  and  a  few  others,  were  the 
men  who  knew  the  facts,  and  in  spite  of  ignorance  and 

1  These  quotations  are  taken  from  A  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theol¬ 
ogy  in  Christendom ,  a  vols.,  by  Andrew  D. White,  LL.D.,  late  President  and  Profes¬ 
sor  of  History  at  Cornell  University.  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1 896.  See  vol.  I.,  chap.  3. 

*  The  law  of  gravitation  was  not  announced  by  Newton  until  1686. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  35 


religious  prejudgment  and  fear  the  world  had  to  come 
to  their  view. 

Yet  such  is  the  strength  and  persistence  of  religious 
belief  that  for  many  generations  the  Churches  opposed 
the  new  theory.  Dr.  White  says:  “So  important  was 
it  thought  to  have  ‘sound  learning’  guarded  and  ‘safe 
science’  taught,  that  in  many  of  the  universities,  as 
late  as  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,1  professors 
were  forced  to  take  an  oath  not  to  hold  the  ‘Pytha¬ 
gorean’ — that  is,  the  Copernican — idea  as  to  the  move¬ 
ment  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  As  the  contest  went 
on,  professors  were  forbidden  to  make  known  to 
students  the  facts  revealed  by  the  telescope.  Special 
orders  to  this  effect  were  issued  by  the  ecclesiastical 
authorities  to  the  universities  and  colleges  of  Pisa, 
Innspruck,  Louvain,  Douay,  Salamanca,  and  others. 
During  generations  we  find  the  authorities  of  these 
universities  boasting  that  those  godless  doctrines  were 
kept  away  from  their  students.”2 

In  1873  a  Lutheran  teacher  published  in  St.  Louis 
a  book  in  which  he  attacked  the  whole  system  of 
modern  astronomy.  He  says:  “Let  no  one  under¬ 
stand  me  as  inquiring  first  where  truth  is  to  be  found — 
in  the  Bible  or  with  the  astronomers.  No;  I  know 
that  before-hand — that  my  God  never  lies,  never  makes 
a  mistake;  out  of  his  mouth  comes  only  truth.”  3 
Dr.  William  E.  Barton  tells  us  that  when  he  was 
teaching  in  the  mountains  of  Kentucky  in  1881,  a 
Baptist  minister  took  his  son  out  of  school  because  the 
boy  was  there  taught  that  the  earth  is  round.  The 
father  explained  that  he  could  not  permit  his  boy  “to 
be  converted  to  infidelity.”  4 

And  today,  in  Zion,  Illinois,  is  a  religious  organi- 

J  J  J  J  O  O 

1  That  is,  as  late  as  1700,  more  than  a  century  and  a  half  after  the  publica¬ 
tion  of  Copernicus’  book. 

2  The  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology ,  vol.  1.,  p.  128. 

3  The  Warfare  of  Science  with  Theology ,  vol.  1,  p.  151. 

4  The  Soul  of  Abraham  Lincoln ,  by  William  E.  Barton,  pp.  64,  65.  Geo.  H.  Do¬ 
ran  Co.  1920. 


36  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


zation,  the  Christian  Catholic  Apostolic  Church, 
whose  members  hold  to  the  geocentric  theory.  Their 
leader,  Wilbur  Glenn  Voliva,  sets  forth  this  view  in 
several  articles  in  the  Theocrat  under  the  caption: 
“Which  Will  You  Accept?  the  Bible,  the  Inspired 
Word  of  God,  or  the  Infidel  Theories  of  Modern 
Astronomy?’'  So  that  380  years  after  Copernicus 
published  his  book,  there  are  still  men  and  women 
whose  religious  belief — namely,  that  the  Bible  is  in¬ 
fallible  and  inerrant  in  every  detail — holds  them  to 
the  geocentric  theory.  It  should  not  occasion  surprise, 
therefore,  that,  64  years  after  the  publication  of  the 
Origin  of  Species ,  the  theory  of  evolution  is  still  re¬ 
jected  because  it  conflicts  with  religious  conviction. 
The  theories  associated  with  the  names  of  Copernicus 
and  Darwin  have  revolutionized  human  thought,  and 
the  adjustment  of  religious  views,  supposed  to  have 
come  directly  from  God,  to  the  new  outlook  has  not 
been  easy.  1 

j 

1  See  Appendix  A. 


Chapter  IV. 


Evolution  Compatible  With  Presbyterianism. 


38  EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


Presbyterianism  is  a  system  for  a  free  people  that  love  a  reg¬ 
ulated,  a  sell-regulating  freedom;  for  a  people  independent,  yet 
patient,  considerate,  trusting  much  to  the  processes  of  discussion 
and  consultation,  and  more  to  the  promised  aid  of  a  much-forgiv¬ 
ing  and  a  watchful  Lord.  It  is  a  system  for  strong  Churches — 
Churches  that  are  not  afraid  to  let  their  matters  see  the  light  of 
day — to  let  their  weakest  parts  and  their  worst  defects  be  can¬ 
vassed  belore  all  men  that  they  may  be  mended.  It  is  a  system 
for  believing  Churches  that  are  not  ashamed  or  afraid  to  cherish 
a  high  ideal  and  to  speak  of  lofty  aims  and  to  work  for  long  and 
far  results,  amid  all  the  discouragements  arising  from  sin  and 
folly  in  their  own  ranks  and  around  them.  It  is  a  system  lor 
catholic  Christians  who  wish  not  merely  to  cherish  private  idio¬ 
syncrasies,  but  to  feel  themselves  identified  with  the  common 
cause  while  they  cleave  directly  to  Him  whose  cause  it  is. — Robert 
Rainv. 

J 


EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  39 


CHAPTER  IV. 

The  second  general  charge  brought  against  the 
theory  of  evolution  is  that  it  is  anti-Christian  and 

J 

tends  to  atheism.  We  have  seen  that  these  things 
were  said  of  the  Copernican  theory.  They  were  also 
said  of  the  theory  of  gravitation  and  of  the  science 
of  geology.  Is  the  charge  any  more  valid  against 
evolution  than  it  was  against  these? 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  Church  itself, 
because  of  the  traditionalism  of  its  priesthood  and 
ministry,  is  responsible  for  much  indifference  and 
skepticism  on  the  part  of  intelligent  men — men  who, 
by  early  training  and  by  inclination,  are  sincerely 
religious.  Such  men  grow  up  to  find  theological  views 
that  do  violence  to  reason  and  heart  and  conscience 
proclaimed  as  an  essential  part  of  the  religion  of  Christ; 
and  because  these  men  are  skeptical  of  the  former, 
they  are  suspected  and  often  denounced  as  being 
hostile  to  the  latter.  If  the  Copernican  theory,  the 
theory  of  gravitation,  and  the  science  of  geology  made 
men  skeptical,  who  was  to  blame — the  scientists  who 
were  teaching  truth,  or  the  Church  which  was  opposing 
it?  And  if  the  theory  of  evolution,  now  held  by  prac¬ 
tically  all  scientists,  is  alienating  men  from  the  Church, 
it  is  certainly  a  fair  question  to  ask:  Who  is  responsible? 

Since  this  pamphlet  is  intended  chiefly  for  Presby¬ 
terians  it  will  be  a  sufficient  answer  to  the  charges 
mentioned  above  to  show  that  some  of  the  ablest  and 
most  widely  known  of  Presbyterian  ministers  have 
accepted  evolution,  in  whole  or  in  part,  and  have 
found  in  it  nothing  incompatible  with  Presbyterianism; 
and  it  may  safely  be  said  that  if  representative  Pres¬ 
byterian  ministers  find  nothing  in  evolution  that  is 
incompatible  with  Presbyterianism,  nothing  will  be 
found  in  it  that  is  inconsistent  with  Christianity — a 
very  much  simpler  thing.  If  evolution  is  not  anti- 
Presbyterian,  it  is  clearly  not  anti-Christian. 


4o  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


As  already  stated,  however,  there  is  one  view  with 
which  neither  the  heliocentric  nor  the  evolutionary  the¬ 
ory  is  compatible;  and  that  is,  the  theory  of  the  verbal 
inerrancy  of  the  Bible.  While  this  theory  is  not  a  part 
of  the  Presbyterian  creed,  much  less  of  the  Christian 
religion,  yet  since  it  is  at  the  bottom  of  nine-tenths  of 
all  opposition  to  the  theory  of  evolution,  I  shall  give 
on  it,  as  well  as  on  evolution,  the  views  of  the  men 

i.  One  of  the  most  noted  leaders  of  Scotch  Pres¬ 
byterianism  was  Dr.  Robert  Rainy  (1826-1906).  Dr. 
Rainy  was  professor  of  Church  History  in  New  Col¬ 
lege,  Edinburgh,  from  1862  to  1900,  and  Principal  of 
that  institution  from  1874  till  his  death.1  He  was 
three  times  elected  moderator  of  the  General  Assembly 
of  his  Church.  In  a  conversation  in  which  Lord 
Roseberry,  A.  J.  Balfour,  and  other  noted  Scotchmen 
were  mentioned,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  of  Principal 
Rainy,  “He  is  unquestionably  the  greatest  of  living 
Scotsmen.”  Dr.  Simpson,  the  biographer  of  Dr. 
Rainy,  says:  “It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the 
Scottish  Church  has  never  had  an  ecclesiastical  leader 
of  greater  spiritual  authority  than  Principal  Rainy 
came  to  have.”2 

When  Dr.  Rainy  was  inducted  into  office  as  Prin¬ 
cipal  of  New  College  in  1874,  took  as  the  subject 
of  his  inaugural  address  Evolution  and  Theology.  That 
he  found  nothing  in  evolution  incompatible  with 
Christianity  as  interpreted  by  Presbyterians  is  clear 
from  the  following  paragraph: — 

“The  new  Principal  delivered  his  inaugural  address  in  October, 
1874.  Its  subject  was  Evolution  and  Theology ,  and  the  lecture 
attracted  considerable  attention.  The  religious  mind  of  the  day 
was  disturbed  about  Darwinism  and  apprehensive  lest  it  should 
affect  the  foundations  of  faith;  and  that  a  man  of  Dr.  Rainy’s 
known  piety  and  orthodoxy  should,  from  the  Principal’s  chair 

1  New  College,  Edinburgh,  and  the  United  Free  Church  colleges  in  Glasgow 
and  Aberdeen  are  what  in  this  country  we  call  theological  seminaries. 

2  Life  oj  Principal  Rainy ,  by  P.  Carnegie  Simpson,  D.D.,  vol.  II.,  p.  163,  vol. 
1,  p.  42a.  Hodder  and  Stoughton.  1909. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  41 


of  the  New  College,  frankly  accept  the  legitimacy  of  the  applica¬ 
tion  of  evolution  even  to  man’s  descent  and  find  it  a  point  on 
which  the  theologian  ‘may  be  perfectly  at  ease’  reassured  many 
minds.  That  theology  can  maintain  a  theistic  doctrine  of  the 
origin  of  the  universe  and  a  spiritual  doctrine  of  man  along  with 
a  readiness  to  let  science  prove  what  it  can  about  evolution  goes 
almost  without  saying  in  intelligent  religious  circles  today;  it  was 
well  worth  saying  from  the  chief  academic  seat  of  the  Free  Church 
in  1874.  ”1 

That  was  only  fifteen  years  after  the  publication 
of  the  Origin  of  the  Species. 

From  the  following  extract  may  be  gathered  Dr. 
Rainy’s  attitude  towards  the  theory  of  the  verbal 
inerrancy  of  the  Bible: — 

“A  process  [heresv  charge]  against  either  Dr.  Dods  or  Dr.  Bruce 
was  refused  [in  1890], 2  and  thus  the  Church  affirmed  the  permis¬ 
sibility  of  a  view  which  did  not  claim  for  the  Bible  that  verbal 
inerrancy  which  had  hitherto  been  almost  universally  bound  up 
with  the  doctrine  of  Inspiration.  Principal  Rainy  supported 
the  motion  above  indicated .... 

“The  general  question  of  the  existence  in  the  Biblical  record 
of  discrepancies  in  non-essential  details  seemed  to  evoke  little 
interest  in  his  mind.  Around  him  men  of  the  older  orthodox 
school  were  thundering  that  the  admission  of  this  destroyed  a 
very  basis  of  faith.  Dr.  Rainy  said  ‘he  regarded  all  these  questions 
about  minor  difficulties  as  in  a  large  degree  despicable  questions, 
and  he  refused  to  concern  himself  very  much  as  to  how  they  were 
to  be  solved.’  Personally  he  held,  or  was  inclined  ‘to  hold,’  though 
he  did  it  ‘under  difficulties,’  and  ‘he  did  not  feel  the  difficulties 
in  holding  it  decreasing,’  that  they  might  find,  after  all,  that 
God  had  preserved  the  Scriptures,  even  in  minor  matters,  from 
real  error.  But  he  refused  out  and  out  to  identify  that  view 
with  inspiration  itself,  and  to  cast  out  any  man  who  took  another 
view.  He  put  this  thus: — 

“‘Suppose  a  student  were  to  say  to  him:  “I  take  the  Word  of 
God  as  my  rule  of  faith  and  life.  I  hear  the  voice  of  God  every¬ 
where  in  it.  I  find  it  assuring  me  on  this  point  and  on  that  what 
my  Father  will  have  me  to  be  and  to  do.  But,  on  the  whole 

1  The  Life  of  Principal  Rainy ,  vol.  1,  p.  285. 

2  Dr.  Marcus  Dods  (1834-1909)  and  Dr.  A.  B.  Bruce  (1831-1899)  had  disavowed 
belief  in  the  theory  of  the  inerrancy  of  Scripture.  Both  were  distinguished  schol¬ 
ars  and  writers.  Dr.  Dods  held  the  chair  of  New  Testament  Exegesis  in  New 
College,  Edinburgh,  succeeding  Dr.  Rainy  as  Principal  in  1907.  Dr.  Bruce  was 
Professor  of  Apologetics  and  New  Testament  Exegesis  in  the  Free  Church  College, 
Glasgow,  from  1875  till  his  death. 


42  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


looking  to  what  the  Scripture  seems  to  me  to  claim  for  itself  and 
looking  to  all  the  facts,  I  think  it  is  fairer  and  truer  to  say  that 
these  human  incidents  of  inaccuracy  in  smaller  things  that  are 
characteristic  just  of  human  history  have  not  in  all  cases  been 
averted  more  than  other  human  incidents  or  conditions  of  human 
writings” — if  they  asked  him  to  say  to  that  student,  “You  are  not 
in  a  condition  to  sign  the  Confession  of  Faith  as  a  minister  of 
the  Free  Church,”  he  would  not  do  it.  .  .  .He  thought  God  was 
calling  them  to  go  into  council  on  this  matter,  and  was  not  cal¬ 
ling  them  to  turn  one  another  out  of  doors  in  connection  with  it.’ 

“The  one  question  in  this  matter  which  did  seem  to  him  worthy 
of  serious  answer  was  when  men  asked  where  we  are  to  stop  if 
inerrances  [ errancies  or  inaccuracies  was  obviously  intended  here] 
are  once  admitted?  On  this  question — the  question  where  the 
line  is  to  be  drawn — Principal  Rainy  said  thus: — 

“  ‘God’s  way  was  not  always  to  give  them  mathematical  lines. 
God  had  not  given  them  clear  mathematical  lines  about  the  canon, 
and  yet  they  found  they  had  surmounted  that,  and  there  was  no 
real  difficulty  about  the  canon.  God  had  not  given  them  math¬ 
ematical  lines  about  the  text,  and  that  was  a  great  matter  of 
difficulty  once,  but  they  had  surmounted  it  and  there  was  no  real 
difficulty  about  the  text.  God  had  not  given  them  a  mathe¬ 
matical  line  about  interpretation,  and  yet  honest  students  of 
Scripture  were  agreed  about  interpretation — he  meant  in  the 
main  and  essential  matters.’1 

“And  in  the  same  way,  Dr.  Rainy  indicated,  it  might  and  would 
be  that,  even  if  God  had  not  given  mathematical  lines  in  the 
details  of  the  narrative,  still  ‘the  Bible  would  prove  itself  a  suffi¬ 
cient  guide  to  honest  inquirers.’  ”2 

2.  Few  Presbyterians  of  recent  years  are  more 
widely  known  than  Henry  Drummond  (1851-1897); 
but  it  is  not  generally  known  that  he  was  a  regularly 
ordained  Presbyterian  minister.  After  four  years  at 
Edinburgh  University,  Drummond  spent  four  years 
in  New  College,  Edinburgh,  preparing  for  the  ministry. 
In  1878  he  was  ordained  an  elder  in  the  Church  of 
which  Dr.  Marcus  Dods  was  pastor — a  scholar  by 
whom  Drummond  was  deeply  influenced.  In  1884  he 
was  elected  by  the  General  Assembly  to  the  chair  of 
Natural  Science  in  the  Free  Church  College,  Glasgow, 
and  in  the  same  year  was  ordained  to  the  ministry  by 


1  See  Appendix  B. 

2  The  Life  of  Principal  Rainy ,  vol.  II.,  pp.  112-114. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


43 


Glasgow  Presbytery.  So  that  his  status  was  that  of 
a  professor  of  theology. 

Probably  no  man  ever  lived  who  more  beautifully 
harmonized  in  his  life  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  the  spirit 
of  science — the  two  most  powerful  and  beneficent 
influences  in  our  modern  world.  On  all  who  knew 
Mr.  Drummond  intimately  he  made  the  impression 
as  of  a  rare  spirit  in  whom  love  and  truth  were  incarnate. 

Mr.  Moody,  with  whose  work  as  evangelist  Mr. 
Drummond  was  for  a  time  associated,  said  of  him: 
“No  words  of  mine  can  better  describe  his  life  or  char¬ 
acter  than  those  in  which  he  has  presented  to  us  The 
Greatest  Thinz  in  the  World.  Some  men  take  an  oc- 
casional  journey  into  the  thirteenth  of  First  Corin¬ 
thians,  but  Henry  Drummond  was  a  man  who  lived 
there  constantly,  appropriating  its  blessings  and  ex¬ 
emplifying  its  teachings.  As  you  read  what  he  terms 
the  analysis  of  love,  you  find  that  all  its  ingredients 
were  interwoven  into  his  daily  life,  making  him  one  of 
the  most  lovable  men  I  have  ever  known.  Was  it 
courtesy  you  looked  for,  he  was  a  perfect  gentleman. 
Was  it  kindness,  he  was  always  preferring  another. 
Was  it  humility,  he  was  simple  and  not  courting  favour. 
It  could  be  said  ot  him  truthfully,  as  it  was  said  of 
the  early  apostles,  “that  men  took  knowledge  of  him 
that  he  had  been  with  Jesus.”  Nor  was  this  love  and 
kindness  only  shown  to  those  who  were  close  friends. 
His  face  was  an  index  to  his  inner  life.  It  was  genial 
and  kind,  and  made  him,  like  his  Master,  a  favourite 

with  children . Never  have  I  known  a  man  who,  in 

my  opinion,  lived  nearer  the  Master  or  sought  to  do 
His  will  more  fully.  .  .  .No  man  has  ever  been  with  me 
for  any  length  of  time  that  I  did  not  see  something 
that  was  unlike  Christ,  and  I  often  see  it  in  myself, 
but  not  in  Henry  Drummond.  All  the  time  we  were 
together  he  was  a  Christlike  man  and  often  a  rebuke 

?  >  i 

to  me. 

1  The  Life  of  Henry  Drummond ,  by  George  Adam  Smith,  p.  9.  Geo.  H.  Doran 
Co.  1898. 


44  E  VOL  UEION  and  PRESB  Y  T ERI  AN  I SM 


Sir  Archibald  Geikie,  the  geologist,  knew  Mr. 
Drummond  intimately  as  pupil  and  companion  and 
wrote  of  him:  “I  have  never  met  with  a  man  in  whom 
transparent  integrity,  high  moral  purpose,  sweetness 
of  disposition  and  exuberant  helpfulness  were  more 
happily  combined  with  wide  culture,  poetic  imagina¬ 
tion,  and  scientific  sympathies  than  they  were  in 
Henry  Drummond.  Most  deeply  do  I  grieve  over 
his  early  death.”1 

Dr.  Carnegie  Simpson  says:  “It  is  hopeless  to 
convey  to  those  who  did  not  know  him  any  just  im¬ 
pression  of  his  unstained  and  yet  so  perfectly  natural 
and  human  purity  and  goodness.  When  he  died,  a 
light  went  out  in  the  lives  of  his  friends.”2 

That  Mr.  Drummond  was  an  evolutionist  is,  of 
course,  well  known.  When  he  became  professor  of 
Natural  Science  in  New  College  (1884),  the  subject  of 
his  inaugural  address  was  Ehe  Contribution  of  Science 
to  Christianity .  This  contribution  he  held  to  be  two¬ 
fold — the  Scientific  Method  and  the  Doctrine  of  Evo¬ 
lution.  Ten  years  later  (1894)  he  expressed  his  views 
on  evolution  more  fully  in  his  book,  Ehe  Ascent  of  Man. 

Not  for  Mr.  Drummond  did  evolution  drive  God 
from  the  universe,  or  put  Him  to  sleep  for  millions 
of  years: — 

“There  are  reverent  minds  who  ceaselessly  scan  the  fields  of 
Nature  and  the  books  of  Science  in  search  of  gaps — gaps  which 
they  will  fill  up  with  God.  As  if  God  lived  in  gaps!  What  view 
of  Nature  or  of  Truth  is  theirs  whose  interest  in  Science  is  not 
in  what  it  can  explain,  but  in  what  it  cannot,  whose  quest  is  ig¬ 
norance,  not  knowledge,  whose  daily  dread  is  that  the  cloud  may 
lift,  and  who,  as  darkness  melts  from  this  field  or  from  that,  begin 
to  tremble  for  the  place  of  His  abode?  What  needs  altering  in 
such  finely  jealous  souls  is  at  once  their  view  of  Nature  and  of 
God.  Nature  is  God’s  writing,  and  can  only  tell  the  truth;  God 
is  light,  and  in  Him  is  no  darkness  at  all. 


1  The  Li/e  of  Henry  Drummond,  p.  io. 

*  The  Life  of  Principal  Rainy,  vol.  II.,  p.  170. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  45 


“If  bv  the  accumulation  of  irresistible  evidence  we  are  driven — 
may  one  not  say  permitted — to  accept  Evolution  as  God’s  method 
in  creation,  it  is  a  mistaken  policy  to  glory  in  what  it  cannot 
account  lor.  The  reason  why  men  grudge  to  Evolution  each  of 
its  fresh  claims  to  show  how  things  have  been  made  is  the  ground¬ 
less  fear  that  if  we  discover  how  they  are  made  we  minimize  their 
divinity.  When  things  are  known,  that  is  to  say,  we  conceive 
them  as  natural,  on  Man’s  level;  when  they  are  unknown,  we  call 
them  divine — as  it  our  ignorance  of  a  thing  were  the  stamp  of 
its  divinity.  If  God  is  only  to  be  left  to  the  gaps  in  our  knowledge, 
where  shall  we  be  when  these  gaps  are  filled  up?  And  if  they  are 
never  to  be  filled  up,  is  God  only  to  be  found  in  the  disorders 
of  the  world?  Those  who  yield  to  the  temptation  to  reserve  a 
point  here  and  there  for  special  divine  interposition  are  apt  to 
forget  that  this  virtually  excludes  God  from  the  rest  of  the  process. 
?  f  If  God  appears  periodically,  he  disappears  periodically.  If  he 
comes  upon  the  scene  at  special  crises  he  is  absent  from  the  scene 
in  the  intervals.  Whether  is  all-God  or  occasional-God  the  nobler 
theory?  Positively,  the  idea  of  an  immanent  God,  which  is  the 
God  of  evolution,  is  infinitely  grander  than  the  occasional  won¬ 
der-worker  who  is  the  God  of  an  old  theology.”  1 

To  Mr.  Drummond  evolution,  besides  possessing 
beauty  and  grandeur  as  a  theory,  gave  us  a  better 
theology  and  a  clearer  Bible: — 

“It  is  needless  at  this  time  of  day  to  point  out  the  surpassing 
grandeur  of  the  new  conception.  How  it  has  filled  the  Christian 
imagination  and  kindled  to  enthusiasm  the  soberest  scientific 
minds,  is  known  to  all .  .  .  .The  doctrine  of  evo  ution  fills  a  gap  at 
the  very  beginning  of  our  religion,  and  no  one  who  looks  now  at 
the  transcendent  spectacle  of  the  world’s  past,  as  disclosed  by 
science,  will  deny  that  it  has  filled  it  worthily.  Yet,  after  all, 
its  beauty  is  not  the  only  part  of  its  contribution  to  Christianity. 
Scientific  theology  required  a  new  view,  though  it  did  not  require 
it  to  come  in  so  magnificent  a  form.  What  it  wanted  was  a  cred¬ 
ible  presentation,  in  view  especially  of  astronomy,  geology,  and 
biology.  These  had  made  the  former  theory  simply  untenable. 
And  science  has  supplied  theology  with  a  theory  which  the  intel¬ 
lect  can  accept  and  which  for  the  devout  mind  leaves  everything 
more  worthy  of  worship  than  before .... 

“The  supreme  contribution  of  Evolution  to  Religion  is  that  it 
has  given  it  a  clearer  Bible,.  .  .  .It  is  not  going  too  far  to  say  that 
there  are  many  things  in  the  Bible  which  are  hard  to  reconcile 


1  The  Ascent  of  Man,  by  Henry  Drummond,  LL.D.,  F.R.S.E.,  F.  G.  S.,  pp. 
333  and  334.  James  Pott  &  Co.  1894. 


46  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


with  our  ideas  of  a  just  and  good  God.  This  is  only  expressing 
what  even  the  most  devout  and  simple  minds  constantly  feel, 
and  feel  to  be  sorely  perplexing,  in  reading  especially  the  Old 
Testament.  But  .  these  difficulties  arise  simply  from  an  oldU 
fashioned  or  unscientific  view  of  what  the  Bible  is,  and  are  similar 
to  the  difficulties  found  in  nature  when  interpreted  either  without 
the  aid  of  science,  or  with  the  science  of  many  centuries  ago .... 

“The  new  Bible  is  a  book  whose  parts,  though  not  of  unequal 
value,  are  seen  to  be  of  different  kinds  of  value;  where  the  casual 
is  distinguished  from  the  essential,  the  local  from  the  universal, 
the  subordinate  from  the  primal  end.  This  Bible  is  not  a  book 
which  has  been  made;  it  has  grown.  Hence  it  is  no  longer  a 
mere  word-book,  nor  a  compendium  of  doctrines,  but  a  nursery 
of  growing  truths.  It  is  not  an  even  plane  of  proof  text  without 
proportion  or  emphasis,  or  light  and  shade;  but  a  revelation  varied 
as  nature,  with  the  Divine  in  its  hidden  parts,  in  its  spirit,  its 
tendencies,  its  obscurities,  and  its  omissions.  Like  nature  it  has 
successive  strata,  and  valley  and  hilltop,  and  mist  and  atmosphere, 
and  rivers  which  are  flowing  still,  and  here  and  there  a  place  which 
is  desert,  and  fossils  too,  whose  crude  forms  are  the  stepping- 
stones  to  higher  things.  It  is  a  record  of  inspired  deeds  as  well 
as  of  inspired  words,  an  ascending  series  of  inspired  facts  in  a 
matrix  of  human  history .  .  .  . 

“The  Bible  of  our  infancy  was  not  an  apologist’s  Bible.  There 
are  things  in  the  Old  Testament  cast  in  his  teeth  by  skeptics,  to 
which  he  [the  apologist]  has  simply  no  answer.  These  are  the 
things,  the  miserable  things,  the  masses  have  laid  hold  of.  They 
are  the  stock-in-trade  to-day  of  the  free-thought  platform,  and  the 
secularist  pamphleteer.  And,  surprising  as  it  is,  there  are  not  a 
few  honest  seekers  who  are  made  timid  and  suspicious,  not  a  few 
on  the  outskirts  of  Christianity  who  are  kept  from  coming  further 
in,  by  the  half-truths  which  a  new  exegesis,  a  reconsideration  of 
the  historic  setting,  and  a  clearer  view  of  the  moral  purposes  of 
God,  would  change  from  barriers  into  bulwarks  of  the  faith.  Such 
a  Bible  scientific  theology  is  giving  us,  and  it  cannot  be  proclaimed 
to  the  mass  of  the  people  too  soon.”1 

With  regard  especially  to  the  conflict  between  Gen¬ 
esis  and  science,  his  biographer  says  of  Mr.  Drummond: 
“On  the  one  side  he  accepted  Mr.  Huxley’s  statement 
that  it  is  impossible  to  harmonize  Genesis  and  science; 
on  the  other  side,  he  denied  that  the  contradiction 

1  These  extracts  are  from  Drummond’s  inaueural  address,  The  Contribution  of 
Science  to  Christianity,  printed  in  The  New  Evangelism s  by  Henry  Drummond, 
pp.  234,  241,  247,  250.  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.  1899. 


EVOL  UTION  and  PRESS  YT ERIANI SM  47 


between  them  was  fatal  to  the  belief  that  Genesis 
contains  ‘a  revelation  of  truth  from  God.’  ”  1 

From  the  extracts  given  it  is  plain  that  while  Mr. 
Drummond  accepted  the  Bible  as  inspired,  he  rejected 
the  theory  of  verbal  inerrancy.  In  a  brief  note  he 
refers  to  verbal  inspiration  as  a  “fundamental  mis¬ 
take,”  says  it  prevents  men  from  thinking,  and  in  the 
same  connection  speaks  of  “the  paralyzing  and  stunting 
effect  of  anything  which  interferes  with  the  legitimate 
exercise  of  human  faculty/'2 

For  these  and  other  views  Mr.  Drummond  was  ot 
course  adversely  criticized.  Writing  from  S.  Fram¬ 
ingham,  Mass.,  to  Lady  Aberdeen,  he  said:  “There 
is  much  heat  here,  but  no  light.  The  Pharisees  are 
down  on  one  of  course,  but  the  Barbarians  show  me 
no  little  kindness.”  His  biographer  says:  “The  story 
goes  that  a  deputation  of  the  usual  adherents  of  the 
Northfield  Conference  waited  on  Mr.  Moody  and  urged 
him  not  to  allow  Drummond  to  speak.  Mr.  Moody 
asked  a  day  to  think  over  the  matter;  and  when  the 
deputation  returned,  informed  them  that  he  had  ‘laid 
it  before  the  Lord,  and  the  Lord  had  shown  him  that 
Drummond  was  a  better  man  than  himself;  so  he  was 
to  go  on!’  This,  if  true,”  continues  Dr.  Smith,  “was 
like  the  man  who  penned  the  tribute  to  Drummond, 
given  in  the  first  chapter  of  this  volume,  and  who 
once  said  to  the  writer,  ‘There’s  nothing  I  ever  read 
of  Henry  Drummond’s,  or  heard  him  say,  that  I  didn’t 
agree  with.’  ”3 

To  many  young  men  and  women  in  our  schools  and 

j  j  CP 

colleges  who  are  feeling  their  way  from  the  old  to  the 
new,  perhaps  without  sympathetic  guidance  or  com¬ 
panionship,  the  following  paragraphs  from  Dr.  Smith’s 
Life  of  Henry  Drummond  (pp.  14  and  262)  may  prove 
encouraging: — 


1  The  Life  of  Henry  Drummond ,  p.  257. 

*  The  Life  of  Henry  Drummond ,  p.  400. 

!  The  Life  of  Henry  Drummond ,  pp.  373,  452. 


48  EVOL UriON  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


“Here  was  a  young  man  trained  in  an  evangelical  family,  and 
in  the  school  of  the  older  orthodoxy,  who  consecrated  his  youth 
to  the  service  of  Christ,  and  never  all  his  life  lost  his  faith  in  Christ 
as  his  Lord  and  Saviour,  or  in  Christ’s  Divinity,  or  in  the  power 
of  His  Atonement,  but  who  grew  away  from  many  of  the  doctrines 
which,  when  he  was  young,  were  still  regarded  by  the  Churches 
as  equally  well  assured  and  indispensable  to  the  creed  of  a  Christian: 
such  as,  for  instance,  belief  in  the  literal  inspiration  and  equal 
divinity  of  all  parts  of  the  Bible.” 

“From  all  this  it  is  apparent  how  far  Drummond  had  travelled 
from  the  positions  of  the  older  orthodoxy.  These  positions  had 
been  the  intellectual  basis  of  the  Christian  faith  for  centuries. 
To  question  them  seemed  to  many  to  be  treason;  to  abandon 
them,  madness.  But  Drummond  was  forced  from  them  by  his 
study  of  facts  in  the  departments  of  natural  science  and  of  Biblical 
criticism  and  Biblical  theology.  And  upon  the  new  positions  to 
which  he  was  led  he  has  evidently  found  a  basis  for  his  faith  more 
stable  than  ever  the  older  was  imagined  to  be,  richer  mines  of 
Christian  experience  and  truth,  better  vantage  grounds  for 
preaching  the  gospel  of  Christ,  and  loftier  summits,  with  infinitely 
wider  prospects  of  the  power  of  God  and  of  the  destiny  of  man.” 

3.  In  the  United  Free  Church  College,  Glasgow, 
Dr.  James  Orr  (1844-1913)  held  the  chair  oi  Apolo¬ 
getics  and  Systematic  Theology  from  1901  till  his 
death.  He  was  a  man  of  wide  range  of  learning  and 
a  prolific  writer.  Dr.  Orr  was  regarded  in  Scotland 
and  in  this  country  as  the  champion  of  conservative 
views.  Allusions  to  this  attitude  are  found  in  the 
following  appreciation  of  him  by  his  colleague,  Dr. 
James  Denney: — 

“The  news  of  Dr.  Orr’s  death  will  be  heard  with  true 
sorrow  far  beyond  the  limits  of  his  own  church  and 
country.  He  was  not  only  the  distinguished  repre¬ 
sentative  of  an  attitude  and  of  opinions  in  religion 
which  are  dear  to  many:  he  had  in  an  unusual  degree 
the  power  of  commanding  the  confidence  and  affection 
of  those  whom  he  represented.  There  was  nothing 
to  overcome  in  approaching  him.  He  appealed  to 
men  with  the  weight  of  a  massive  and  simple  nature 
intellectually  powerful  and  self-reliant,  spiritually 
humble  and  sincere,  and,  above  all,  transparently 


E  VOL  UriON  and  ERE  SB  YEERIANISM  49 


disinterested.  When  he  took  a  side  decisively  in 
controversy,  it  was  not  because  it  was  the  safe  side  or 
because  there  was  anything  to  be  made  by  it.  .  .  .He 
had  little  patience  with  the  thinkers — or  the  enemies 
of  thinking — who  divide  the  world  and  the  mind  be¬ 
tween  science  and  religion,  and  who  tell  us  that  it  need 
not  or  does  not  make  any  difference  to  our  religious 
faith  though  we  change  our  minds  on  questions  of 
ph  ysical  science,  of  philosophy,  or  of  history.  The 
mind  for  him  was  just  the  instrument  for  the  unifica¬ 
tion  of  all  the  truth  within  our  reach,  and  a  difference 
at  any  point  made  a  difference  all  through.  .  .  .He  had 
no  cheap  and  easy  way  of  evading  or  dismissing  diffi¬ 
culties.  He  had  studied  Darwin  and  Weismann,  he 
had  an  expert’s  acquaintance  with  criticism,  both  in 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  New,  he  was  widely  read 
in  the  literature  of  comparative  religion;  and  when  he 
discussed  the  difference  which  was  made  to  the  Christian 
view  of  God  and  the  world  by  conclusions  drawn  in 
any  of  these  fields,  it  was  with  a  knowledge  which 
commanded  the  respect  even  of  those  whom  he  failed 
to  convince.”1 

Because  of  Dr.  Orr’s  conservatism,  and  because  of 
the  esteem  in  which  he  was  held  throughout  the  South¬ 
ern  Presbyterian  Church,  it  will  be  interesting  to  learn 
his  views  on  evolution  and  verbal  inerrancy.  2 

Concerning  evolution  Dr.  Orr  writes:  “On  the 
general  hypothesis  of  evolution,  as  applied  to  the 
organic  world,  I  have  nothing  to  say,  except  that, 
within  certain  limits,  it  seems  to  me  extremely  prob¬ 
able,  and  supported  by  a  large  body  of  evidence.  This, 
however,  only  refers  to  the  fact  of  a  genetic  relationship 
of  some  kind  between  the  different  species  of  plants 
and  animals,  and  does  not  affect  the  means  by  which 
this  development  may  be  supposed  to  be  brought 

1  The  Christian  Work ,  Oct.  1 8,  1913. 

2  At  the  meeting  of  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Southern  Presbyterian  Church 
in  Savannah,  Ga.,  in  1909,  Dr.  Orr  delivered  one  of  the  addresses  celebrating  the 
400th  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Calvin. 


50  EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


about.”1  And  in  one  of  his  last  books,  he  says:  “The 
day  may  be  regarded  as  past  where  such  a  conception 
as  evolution  was  thought  to  conflict  with,  or  supersede, 
the  belief  in  ends,  plan,  purpose,  intelligent  ordering, 
and  providential  guidance,  in  creation.  These  ideas  not 
simply  stand  secure;  they  have  received  firmerground¬ 
ing  in  the  best  thought  of  evolutionary  science  itself.”2 

But  while  accepting  the  evolutionary  theory  in 
general,  Dr.  Orr  did  not  believe  it  to  be  applicable  to 
man.  He  says:  “I  claim,  then,  that  so  far  as  the 
evidence  of  science  goes,  the  Bible  doctrine  of  a  pure 
beginning  of  the  race  is  not  overturned.  I  do  not 
enter  into  the  question  of  how  we  are  to  interpret  the 
third  chapter  of  Genesis, — whether  as  history  or  alle¬ 
gory  or  myth,  or,  most  probable  of  all,  as  old  tradition 
clothed  in  oriental  allegorical  dress, — but  the  truth 
embodied  in  that  narrative,  viz.,  the  fall  of  man  from 
an  original  state  of  purity,  I  take  to  be  vital  to  the 
Christian  view.3  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  beware, 
even  while  holding  to  the  Biblical  account,  of  putting 
into  the  original  state  of  man  more  than  the  narrative 
warrants.”  4  More  directly:  “Evolution,  as  I  said 
earlier,  is  not  Darwinism,  and  the  Darwinian  idea  of 
the  production  of  man  by  slow  gradations  from  lower 
ape-like  forms  is  one  which  I  think  is  being  discredited 
on  scientific  grounds.”  5 

On  the  subject  of  revelation  and  inspiration,  the 
distinction  between  which  he  considers  to  be  very 
important,  Dr.  Orr  has  written  an  informing  volume. 
The  following  excerpts,  giving  Dr.  Orr’s  view  of  the 
part  that  inspiration  plays  in  the  Biblical  record  of 
historic ,  prehistoric ,  and  scientific  material,  have  a 
direct  bearing  on  the  theory  of  inerrancy: — 

1  The  Christian  View  of  God  and  the  Worlds  p.  99.  Charles  Scribner’s  Sons.  1897, 

2  Revelation  and  Inspiration ,  p.  42.  Scribner’s  Sons.  1910 

3  If  man  is  descended  from  the  lower  animals,  he  is,  so  far  as  morality  is  con¬ 
cerned,  descended  from  “an  original  state  of  purity.” 

4  The  Christian  View  of  God  and  the  Worlds  p.  185. 

*  See  Appendix  C. 


EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  5 1 


“It  is  not  uncommon  to  hear  inspiration  spoken  of  as  if  it  ren¬ 
dered  the  subject  of  it  superior  to  ordinary  sources  of  information, 
or  at  least  was  at  hand  to  supply  supernaturally  all  gaps  or  defi- 
ciences  in  that  information.  The  records  of  the  Bible  have  only 
to  be  studied  as  they  lie  before  us  to  show  that  this  is  an  entire 
mistake .... 

“1.  In  historical  matters  it  is  evident  that  inspiration  is  de¬ 
pendent  for  its  knowledge  of  facts  on  the  ordinary  channels  of 
information — on  older  documents,  on  oral  tradition,  on  public 
registers,  on  genealogical  lists,  etc.  No  sober-minded  defender 
of  inspiration  would  now  think  of  denying  this  proposition.  One 
has  only  to  look  into  the  Biblical  books  to  discover  the  abundant 
proof  of  it ...  . 

“2.  This  principle  applies  not  only  to  historic,  but  to  pre¬ 
historic  times,  where  written  records  altogether  fail.... The  ex¬ 
ample  in  Scripture  is  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis.  The  theory 
at  present  prevailing,  that  these  chapters — the  story  of  creation 
and  paradise,  antediluvian  lists,  flood,  etc. — are  based  on  Baby¬ 
lonian  myths,  appropriated  and  purified  by  the  spirit  of  reve¬ 
lation  in  Israel,  falls  below  the  mark  of  dignity  in  the  narratives. 
It  is  truer  to  regard  them  as  the  embodiments  of  the  earliest  and 
most  precious  traditions  of  the  race,  in  the  purer  form  in  which 
they  descended  through  the  ancestors  of  the  Hebrew  people. 
They  may,  however,  be  ancient,  and  yet  bear  traces  of  transmis¬ 
sion  in  a  more  or  less  ^allegorical  or  symbolical  form.  Few,  e.  g., 
will  be  disposed  to  take  literally  the  account  of  the  making  of 
Eve  out  of  the  rib  taken  from  Adam’s  side  while  he  slept.  The 
story  of  the  Fall,  again,  may  well  be  the  account  of  an  actual 
historical  catastrophe  in  the  commencement  of  the  race,  in  its 
cradie  in  the  region  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates.  Truths  of  eter¬ 
nal  moment  may  be  enshrined,  it  is  believed  are,  in  its  simple 
narrative.  1  et,  with  many  of  the  most  devout  expounders  of 
the  story,  we  can  hardly  err  in  seeing  symbolical  elements,  or  an 
allegorical  dress,  in  the  features  of  the  serpent,  the  trees,  the 
cherubim.  The  cherubim,  throughout  the  Scripture,  are  ideal 
figures.  While,  again,  remarkable  longevity  may  have  been,  and 
probably  was,  characteristic  of  the  oldest  race  of  men,1  there  is, 
even  in  the  most  conservative  circles,  a  growing  concensus  of 
opinion  that  the  early  genealogies  cannot  be  interpreted  with 
modern  literalitv — that  chronology  demands  an  extensive  length¬ 
ening  of  the  pre-Abrahamic  period,  and  that  the  names  given  in 
the  lists  stand  rather  for  representatives  of  tribes,  or  clans,  or  for 
heads  of  families,  than  for  individuals .... 

1  It  probably  was  not.  “With  regard  to  the  human  race,  there  seems  to  be  almost 
no  doubt  that  the  average  duration  of  life  has  increased  with  civilization.”  ( En¬ 
cyclopedia  Britannicay  nth  edition,  article  “Longevity”). 


52  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


“3.  This  principle  applies,  finally,  to  the  relations  of  inspira¬ 
tion  to  scientific  knowledge.  JThe  Bible  is  not,  nor  was  ever  inr 
tended  to  be,  an  anticipative  text-book  of  science.  This  is  evident 
on  the  face  of  it.  Where  natural  phenomena  are  described,  it 
is  as  they  appear  to  the  natural  observer.  There  is  no  pretence 
of  acquaintance  with  our  modern  astronomy,  geology,  physics, 
or  biology;  or  with  modern  scientific  classifications  of  plants  and 
animals.  The  standpoint  is  religious — the  creation  of  the  world 
by  God,  its  dependence  on  Him,  His  universal  activity  in  it  and 
providence  over  it.  These  conceptions  stand  on  a  distinct  footing 
from  details  of  science.”1 

More  specifically  as  to  the  theory  of  inerrancy,  Dr. 
Orr  savs: — 

j 

“The  doctrine  of  inspiration  grows  out  of  that  of  revela¬ 
tion,  and  can  only  be  made  intelligible  through  the  latter. 
The  older  method  was  to  prove  first  the  inspiration  (by  his¬ 
torical  evidence,  miracles,  claims  of  writers),  then  through 
that  establish  the  revelation.  This  view  still  finds  an  echo  in 
the  note  sometimes  heard — ‘If  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible  (com¬ 
monly  some  theory  of  inspiration)  be  given  up,  what  have  we 
left  to  hold  by?’  It  is  urged,  e.  g.,  that  unless  we  can  demon¬ 
strate  what  is  called  the  ‘inerrancy’  of  the  Biblical  record,  down 
even  to  its  minutest  details,  the  whole  edifice  of  belief  in  revealed 
religion  falls  to  the  ground.  This,  on  the  face  of  it,  is  a  most 
suicidal  position  for  any  defender  of  revelation  to  take  up.  It 
is  certainly  a  much  easier  matter  to  prove  the  reality  of  a  divine 
revelation  in  the  history  of  Israel,  or  in  Christ,  than  it  is  to  prove 
the  inerrant  inspiration  of  every  part  of  the  record  through  which 
that  revelation  has  come  to  us.  2 .  .  . 

‘Verbal  inspiration,’  is  apt  to  suggest  a  mechanical  theory  of 
inspiration,  akin  to  dictation,  which  all  intelligent  upholders  of 
inspiration  now  agree  in  repudiating.  In  the  result  it  may  be 

1  Revelation  and  Inspiration ,  pp.  163,  164,  165,  166,  168. 

2  Of  the  four  advances  in  modern  thought  on  the  whole  subject  of  the  inspiration 
of  the  Bible,  Dr.  Orr  says:  “Probably  the  principal  advance  in  the  modern  hand¬ 
ling  of  this  subject  is  in  the  attempts  at  the  more  accurate  discrimination  of  the 
related  ideas  of  revelation  and  inspiration  themselves.  So  long  as  revelation  was 
directly  identified  with  Scripture,  such  discrimination  was  impossible;  now  nearly 
all  writers  recogniz  a  distinction  between  the  two  ideas.”  (p.  23).  For  example, 
Dr.  Orr  would  not  look  upon  such  parts  of  the  Bible  as  the  first  chapters  of  First 
Chronicles  as  in  any  sense  a  revelation  from  God,  or  as  being  inspired.  This 
was  the  view  held  by  Dr.  Rainy.  “Speaking  of  inspiration  or  the  persuasion 
that  the  Bible  is  ‘no  mere  work  of  man,’  he  says  this  is  not  to  be  maintained  as 
recognizable  in  ‘every  separate  fragment  of  Scripture;’  but,  he  adds:  ‘It  is  Script¬ 
ure  taken  together,  and  as  it  hangs  together  and  is  of  a  piece,  of  which  this  is  said.” 
(Li/e,  vol.  I.,  p.  345). 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  53 


held  to  imply  a  literality  in  narratives,  quotations  or  reports  of 
discourses,  which  the  facts,  as  we  know  them,  do  not  warrant .... 

“Very  commonly  it  is  urged  by  upholders  of  this  doctrine  that 
‘inerrancy’  in  every  minute  particular  is  involved  in  the  very 
idea  of  a  book  given  by  inspiration  of  God.  This  might  be  held 
to  be  true  on  a  theory  of  verbal  dictation,  but  it  can  scarcely  be 
maintained  on  a  just  view  of  the  actual  historical  genesis  of  the 
Bible.  One  may  plead,  indeed,  for  ‘a  supernatural  providential 
guidance’  which  has  for  its  aim  to  exclude  all,  even  the  least, 
error  or  discrepancy  in  statement,  even  such  as  may  inhere  in  the 
sources  from  which  the  information  is  obtained,  or  may  arise  from 
corruption  of  anterior  documents.  But  this  is  a  violent  assumption 
which  there  is  nothing  in  the  Bible  really  to  support.  It  is  per¬ 
ilous,  therefore,  to  seek  to  pin  down  faith  to  it  as  a  matter  of 
vital  moment.  Inspiration,  in  sanctioning  the  incorporation  of 
an  old  genealogy,  or  of  an  historic  document  in  some  respects 
defective,  no  more  makes  itself  responsible  for  those  defects  than 
it  does  for  the  speeches  of  Job’s  friends  in  the  Book  of  Job,  or 
for  the  sentiments  of  many  parts  of  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  or 
for  the  imperfect  translation  of  Old  Testament  passages  in  quo¬ 
tations  from  the  Septuagint.”  1 

4.  Few  theologians  in  the  Presbyterian  Church  of 
the  past  generation  have  been  more  influential  than 
Dr.  James  Denney  (1856-1917).  Dr.  Denney  was 
professor  of  New  Testament  Language,  Literature, 
and  Theology,  in  the  United  Free  Church  College, 
Glasgow,  after  1897,  and  later  was  made  Principal  of 
that  institution.  His  writings  are  marked  by  a  rare 
combination  of  learning,  of  spiritual  insight,  and  of 
intellectual  strength  and  candor. 

Under  the  caption,  Loss  of  a  Great  Scotch  Leader , 
the  Continent  (Presbyterian),  June  21,  1917,  says: 
“The  cable  brines  news  from  Scotland  of  the  death 
of  Dr.  James  Denney,  principal  of  the  United  Free 
Church  Theological  school  in  Glasgow.  This  will  be 
a  very  depressing  loss  to  Scotch  Presbyterianism,  for 
Dr.  Denney  held  a  leadership  and  prestige  among  the 
Scotch  people  excelled  by  no  other  clergyman  except 
the  venerable  Dr.  Alexander  Whyte,  the  principal  of 
New  College  in  Edinburgh.” 


1  Revelation  and  Inspiration ,  pp.  197,  210,  213. 


54  EVOL  UriON  and  PRESB  Y  T. ERI  AN  I SM 


The  following  editorial,  quoted  in  part,  appeared 
in  the  Christian  Work,  July  7,  1917:  “The  death  of 
Principal  James  Denney,  D.  D.,  of  the  United  Free 
Church  College,  Glasgow,  at  the  age  of  sixty-one,  is 
a  painful  shock  to  all  who  found  his  great  literary  out¬ 
put  a  source  of  stimulating,  mental  enrichment.  .  .  . 
From  his  youth  Dr.  Denney  was  a  great  reader,  and 
on  entering  the  Free  Church  College  astonished  every¬ 
body  by  the  range  of  his  knowledge.  .  .  .He  was  a  sane 
and  open-minded  champion  of  essential  orthodoxy, 
and  believed  that  it  could  be  commended  to  the  reason¬ 
able  modern  mind.  .  .  .He  was  evangelical  to  the  core, 
and  fervently  evangelistic  in  his  insistence  on  the 
necessity  of  power  rather  than  eloquence  and  smartness 
in  preaching.  His  influence  on  his  students  was  in¬ 
tense  and  deep.  As  a  theologian,  his  mental  poise 
and  tolerance  towards  schools  of  thought  from  which 
he  radically  differed  made  him  somewhat  suspect  to 
the  ‘hard  shell’  evangelicals.  He  hated  shallow  gen¬ 
eralizations  and  hop-skip-and-jump  methods  of  avoid¬ 
ing  patient  working  to  established  conclusions.  He 
wanted  to  be  sure  that  he  knew  what  he  knew — most 
of  all  that  he  was  sure  of  Christ.  .  .  .Less  and  less  did 
he  put  his  trust  in  creedal  and  confessional  attempts 
to  limit  Christ  to  the  mental  outlook  of  a  school  or 
an  age.  He  even  proposed  that  creed  subscription 
should  be  abandoned  in  favor  of  a  comprehensive  and 
Scriptural  confession  of  faith,  which  he  suggested 
might  be,  ‘I  believe  in  God  through  Jesus  Christ,  his 
only  son,  our  Lord  and  Savior.’  His  view  was  that 
a  man’s  or  a  Church’s  Christology  was  a  thing  apart 
from  a  vital  personal  faith,  and,  if  the  faith  were  real, 
the  theological  interpretation  of  it  might  be  infinitely 
variable.” 

There  can  be  no  question,  therefore,  of  Dr.  Denney’s 
scholarship  and  ability,  of  his  thorough  evangelicalism, 
or  of  the  confidence  reposed  in  him  by  his  Church — 


EVOL  UEION  and  ERE  SB  YEERIANISM  5  5 


the  United  Free  Church  of  Scotland.  In  fact  he  was 
held  in  the  highest  esteem  by  Presbyterians  everywhere. 

Now  what  was  Dr.  Denney’s  view  of  evolution? 
This  sentence  by  way  of  introduction:  “If  religious 
people  had  always  done  their  part  in  the  study  of  the 
works  of  God,  that  sincere  and  reverent  study  which 
their  Divine  origin  demands;  and  if  scientific  people 
had  always  remembered  that  every  separate  truth 
becomes  false  when  it  is  cut  off  from  relation  to  truth 
as  a  whole — that  is,  to  the  mind  of  God — we  might 
have  been  spared  much  misunderstanding  and  strife, 
and  a  more  noble  and  intelligent  praise  would  have 
gone  up  to  God  from  the  hearts  of  all  His  children.”1 

Concerning  evolution  Dr.  Denney  writes:  “The 
Darwinian  theory  of  the  origin  of  species — probably 
the  most  immediately  and  widely  influential  theory 
ever  introduced  to  human  intelligence — has  the  law 
of  heredity,  and  of  accumulation  by  heredity,  as  one 
of  its  essential  levers;  and  through  it  that  law  has 
taken  possession  of  the  common  mind  as  it  had  never 
done  before.”  2 

While  accepting  the  evolutionary  theory  Dr.  Denney 
felt  it  important,  as  everyone  should,  to  recognize  the 
absolute  distinction  and  supremacy  of  man  as  a  moral, 
intelligent,  and  creative  spirit.  In  the  first  sentence 

CP  J  1 

of  the  following  quotation  the  emphasis  is  on  merely: — 

“Is  man  merely  a  piece  of  nature?  Is  he  merely  the  last  term 
in  an  ascending  series  of  animals,  the  consumation  or  crown  of 
the  natural  process?  No  one  who  has  really  reflected  would 
answer  in  the  affirmative.  It  is  true  that  all  forms  of  life  are 
akin;  it  is  true  that  we  are  blood  relations  of  everthing  that  breathes; 
it  is  true  that  there  is  only  one  chemistry,  one  physiology,  for 
the  interpretation  of  life  in  every  degree  from  the  amphioxus  up 
to  man.  But  if  this  is  a  humbling  and  perhaps  a  depressing 
truth — if  it  casts  the  shadow  of  physical  necessity  over  what  we 
are  accustomed  to  regard  as  the  realm  of  human  freedom — let  us 
consider  on  the  other  hand  that  the  only  chemist,  the  only  phys¬ 
iologist,  the  only  interpreter  of  nature  in  her  one  and  pervasive 


1  The  IV ay  Everlasting ,  by  James  Denney,  D.D.,  p.  84.  Hodder  &  Stoughton.  1911 

2  Studies  in  Theology ,  p.  87.  Hodder  &  Stoughton.  1895. 


5 6  EVOL UriON  and  PRES B YTERIANISM 


life  is  man.  Man  is  not  only  a  part  of  nature,  he  confronts  nature 
as  nothing  which  is  only  a  part  of  it  could  do.  He  confronts  it 
and  includes  it  at  the  same  time.  He  is  not  only  the  crown  of 
nature,  he  is  in  some  sense  its  king.  It  is  his  territory,  his  inheri¬ 
tance.  He  confronts  it  with  a  sovereign  self-consciousness.  He 
is  not  only,  like  other  living  creatures,  a  subject  which  science 
studies;  unlike  other  living  creatures  he  is  the  creator  of  the  very 
science  by  which  this  study  is  carried  on.  Though  he  lives  in 
time,  he  is  not  time’s  fool;  a  relation  to  God,  to  eternal  truth,  to 
inviolable  duty,  to  a  free  calling  in  which  nature  is  subject  to  him, 
is  just  as  much  a  part  or  characteristic  of  his  being  as  his  kinship 
to  nature  as  a  whole,  and  the  rooting  of  his  life  in  the  physical 
system  around  him.  This  is  not  only  recognized  in  every  sound 
philosophy:  it  stands  on  the  first  page  of  the  Bible  as  part  of  its 
conception  of  the  true  constitution  of  man.  It  is  what  the  Bible 
means  when  it  tells  us  that  God  created  man  in  His  own  image , 
and  gave  him  dominion  over  all  the  earth.”1 

The  theory  of  evolution  necessitates  a  change  of 
view  concerning  the  historical  origin  of  sin;  and  this 
may  raise  questions  as  to  the  essential  nature  of  sin, 
man’s  moral  accountability,  and  his  need  of  atonement. 
On  these  questions  Dr.  Denney  has  written  with 
remarkable  insight,  penetrating  through  Oriental 
speech  and  figure  to  the  very  heart  and  truth  of  the 
matter: — 

“It  is  no  more  necessary  in  connection  with  the  Atonement 
than  in  any  other  connection  that  we  should  have  a  doctrine  of 
the  origin  of  sin.  We  do  not  know  its  origin,  we  only  know  that 
it  is  here.  We  cannot  observe  the  genesis  of  the  bad  conscience 
any  more  than  we  can  observe  the  genesis  of  consciousness  in 
general.  We  see  that  consciousness  does  stand  in  relief  against 
the  background  of  natural  life;  but  though  we  believe  that,  as 
it  exists  in  us,  it  has  emerged  from  that  background,  we  cannot 
see  it  emerge;  it  is  an  ultimate  fact,  and  is  assumed  in  all  that  we 
can  ever  regard  as  its  physical  antecedents  and  presuppositions. 
In  the  same  way,  the  moral  consciousness  is  an  ultimate  fact,  and 
irreducible.  The  physical  theory  of  evolution  must  not  be  allowed 

1  The  Way  Everlasting ,  p.  89.  That  there  are  many  who  think  that  in  the  image 
of  God  has  reference  to  bodily  likeness,  and  is  therefore  an  argument  against  evo¬ 
lution,  testifies  to  a  singular  survival  of  primitive  anthropomorphism.  God  has  no 
body.  If  any  animal,  from  a  tyrannosaurus  to  a  tadpole,  had  the  spiritual  endow¬ 
ment  of  man,  it  would  reflect  the  image  of  God  just  as  truly  as  man  does.  “We  may 
be  very  clear,”  says  Dr.  Orr,  “that  by  the  image  of  God  is  not  to  be  understood 
anything  relating  to  man’s  bodily  form.”  ( Sidelights  on  Christian  Doctrine ,  p.  79. 
See  also  Bishop  Ryle  on  Genesis  1  :iS  in  the  Cambridge  Bible). 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  57 


to  mislead  us  here,  and  in  particular  it  must  not  be  allowed  to 
discredit  the  conception  of  moral  responsibility  for  sin  which  is 
embodied  in  the  story  of  the  Fall.  1  Each  of  us  individually  has 

J  * 

risen  into  moral  life  from  a  mode  of  being  which  was  purely  natural; 
in  other  words,  each  of  us,  individually,  has  been  a  subject  of 
evolution;  but  each  of  us  also  has  fallen — fallen,  presumably,  in 
ways  determined  by  his  natural  constitution,  yet  certainly,  as 
conscience  assures  us,  in  ways  for  which  we  are  morally  answerable, 
and  to  which,  in  the  moral  constitution  of  the  world,  consequences 
attach  which  we  must  recognize  as  our  due.  They  are  not  only 
results  of  our  action,  but  results  which  that  action  has  merited, 
and  there  is  no  moral  hope  for  us  unless  we  accept  them  as  such. 
Now  what  is  true  of  any,  or  rather  of  all,  of  us,  without  compromise 
of  the  moral  consciousness,  may  be  true  of  the  race,  or  of  the  first 
man,  if  there  was  a  first  man.  Evolution  and  a  Fall  cannot  be 
inconsistent,  for  both  enter  into  every  moral  experience  of  which 
we  know  anything;  and  no  opinion  we  hold  about  the  origin  of 
sin  can  make  it  anything  else  than  it  is  in  conscience.  Of  course 
when  one  tries  to  interpret  sin  outside  of  conscience,  as  though 
it  were  purely  physical,  and  did  not  have  its  being  in  personality, 
consciousness,  and  will,  it  disappears;  and  the  laborious  sophistries 
of  such  interpretations  must  be  left  to  themselves.  The  point  for 
us  is  that  no  matter  how  sin  originated,  in  the  moral  consciousness 
in  which  it  has  its  being  it  is  recognized  as  a  derangement  of  the 
vital  relations  of  man,  a  violation  of  that  universal  order  outside 
of  which  he  has  no  true  good.”2 

The  theory  of  verbal  inerrancy  Dr.  Denney  rejected. 
The  circumstances  attending  his  public  disavowal  of 
it  as  related  by  Simpson  in  his  Life  of  Principal  Rainy 
are  interesting: — 

“In  her  decision  in  this  case  [the  case  of  Dr.  Dods  and  Dr.  Bruce] 
the  orthodox  and  evangelical  Free  Church  of  Scotland  was  taking  a 
notable  step  in  theological  progress.  She  was  not  so  much  changing 
as  sifting  the  doctrine  of  inspiration.  It  is  true  that  the  standards  of 
the  Free  Church  did  not  impose  a  doctrine  of  verbal  inerrancy. 
The  Confession  of  Faith,  indeed,  carefully  avoids  committing 
itself  to  any  theory  of  the  mode  or  degree  of  inspiration.  But 
unquestionably,  the  prevalent  and,  till  the  days  of  Robertson 
Smith,3  one  might  almost  say  the  universal  view  of  that  subject 

1  Compare  Dr.  Orr:  “The  Christian  doctrine  of  Redemption  certainly  does  not 
rest  on  the  narrative  in  Gen.  III.,  but  it  rests  on  the  reality  of  the  sin  and  guilt 
of  the  world,  which  would  remain  facts  though  the  third  chapter  of  Genesis  never 
had  been  written.”  The  Christian  View  oj  God  and  the  World ,  p.  82.) 

2  The  Death  oj  Christ:  Revised  and  Enlarged  Edition  Including  The  Atonement 
and  the  Modern  Mind ,  pp.  277,  278.  Hodder  &  Stoughton.  1911. 

3  See  Appendix  D. 


58  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


in  the  Scottish  Church — and  indeed  in  all  Churches  except  those 
openly  rationalistic — was  that  called  plenary  inspiration.  Now 
this  was  ceasing  to  be  even  the  prevailing  view  in  the  Free  Church 
of  Scotland.  A  prominent  doctor  and  professor  [Dr.  Dods]  ex¬ 
pressly  disclaimed  it,  and  not  only  was  he  not  prosecuted  but  he 
was  retained  as  a  teacher  of  the  Church’s  ministry.  A  scholar 
of  the  younger  generation  [Rev.  James  Denney]  frankly  declared 
in  the  Assembly  itself  that  ‘for  verbal  inerrancy  he  cared  not  one 
straw,  for  it  would  be  worth  nothing  if  it  were  there  [in  the  Con¬ 
fession  of  Faith]  and  it  was  not,’  and  the  Assembly  only  applauded. 
All  this  meant  a  marked  change,  not,  I  repeat,  in  the  confessional 
doctrine,  but  in  the  actual  mind  of  the  Church  on  the  subject. 
As  A.  B.  Davidson  put  it  in  his  wicked  way,  ‘Criticism  has  now 
percolated  down  to  the  lower  strata  of  thinking  minds;  even  the 
bishops  have  heard  of  it.’ 1 

“Now  the  most  interesting  thing  about  this  change,  so  far  at 
least  as  the  Free  Church  was  concerned,  was  that  it  was  associ¬ 
ated  with  some  of  the  most  powerfully  religious  men  in  the  Church 
and  was  a  positive  far  more  than  a  negative  movement.  It  was 
not  a  mere  denial  of  an  old  view.  It  was  that  the  old  view  dropped 
off  in  the  assertion  that  Scripture  is  infallible  in  its  revelation  of 
the  salvation  of  God  in  Christ.  Inspiration  is  the  characteristic 
not  of  the  text  but  of  the  message  of  the  Bible;  and  it  was  men 
in  the  Church  who  were  second  to  none  in  earnestness  about  that 
message  who  found  they  ‘cared  not  a  straw  for  verbal  inerrancy.’ 
It  was  under  influences  such  as  these  that  the  Free  Church,  grad¬ 
ually  and  yet  with  astonishing  rapidity,  recognized  a  new  view 
of  what  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible  means.  The  change  was  not 
a  rationalistic  change.  It  was  the  reverse  of  that.  And  to  many, 
instead  of  dethroning  the  Bible,  it  stamped  it  more  and  more 
with  the  seal  of  God  as  the  authority  for  its  saving  message.”2 

The  first  chapters  of  Genesis,  more  than  any  other 
part  of  the  Bible,  are  thought  of  in  connection  with 
the  theory  of  inerrancy,  and  on  the  character  of  these 
chapters  Dr.  Denney  has  written  with  his  usual  candor. 
In  the  following  extracts,  which  are  destructive  ol 

1  Dr.  Davidson  (1831-1902),  professor  of  Oriental  Languages  in  New  College’ 
Edinburgh,  for  nearly  forty  years,  was  one  of  the  most  famous  Old  Testament 
scholars  and  exegetes.  Few  teachers  have  been  more  revered,  beloved,  and  in¬ 
fluential.  “Upon  his  sudden  death  the  praises  of  the  wise  and  good  rained  round 
his  bier;  and  when  a  phalanx  of  scholars  bore  him  to  where  he  lies  in  the  Grange 
Cemetery,  half  way  between  his  two  homes  on  the  sunnier  Edinburgh  slope,  it 
war  with  hearts  beating  to  the  ancient  tune — ‘This  is  our  master,  famous,  calm 
and  dead.’  ”  (Biographical  Introduction  to  a  volume  of  Davidson’s  sermons, 
The  Called  oj  God,  p.  50.  T.  &  T.  Clark,  Edinburgh,  1902.) 

2  The  Life  oj  Principal  Rainy ,  vol.  II.,  pp.  114-116. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  59 


older  views,  one  is  impressed,  as  so  often  elsewhere, 
with  the  constructive  and  religious  note  in  Dr.  Den¬ 
ney’s  thinking: — 

“Perhaps  what  has  troubled  most  people  in  this  connection  is 
the  verdict  of  criticism  on  the  opening  chapters  of  the  Bible. 
These  are  in  form  historical,  but  they  manifestly  treat  of  pre¬ 
historic  times.  The  very  moment  we  think  of  it,  it  is  obvious 
that  the  story  of  the  first  man  cannot  be  history,  as  the  story  of 
the  siege  and  conquest  of  Jerusalem  by  the  Chaldeans  is  history. 
The  beginnings  of  man’s  life  on  earth  lie  far  behind  all  records, 
and  all  traditions  too  .... 

“The  truth  is  that  these  stories  illustrate,  in  the  race  to  which 
God  chose  to  reveal  Himself,  a  stage  through  which  the  human 
mind  passes  in  all  races,  and  indeed  in  all  individuals.  Long 
before  man  is  capable  of  science  or  history,  he  asks  himself  ques¬ 
tions  to  which  only  science  or  history  can  give  the  answer,  and 
not  only  asks,  but  answers  them  too.  Now  what  is  the  technical 
name  of  these  prescientific  answers  to  scientific  questions?  for 
these  prehistoric  answers  to  historical  questions?  The  name 
which  is  technically  given  to  them  is  myths.  Among  people  who 
do  not  know  anything  of  mythology,  myth  is  usually  a  term  of 
contempt.  But  here  it  is  a  term  of  science.  There  is  a  stage 
at  which,  in  this  sense,  the  whole  contents  of  the  mind,  as  yet 
incapable  of  science  or  of  history,  may  be  called  mythological.  And 
what  criticism  shows  us,  in  its  treatment  of  the  early  chapters  of 
Genesis,  is  that  God  does  not  disdain  to  speak  to  the  mind,  nor 
through  it,  even  when  it  is  at  this  lowly  stage.  Even  the  myth, 
in  which  the  beginnings  of  human  life,  lying  beyond  human  re¬ 
search,  are  represented  to  itself  by  the  child-mind  of  the  race, 
may  be  made  the  medium  of  revelation.  God  has  actually  taken 
these  weak  things  of  the  world  and  things  that  are  despised,  and 
has  drawn  near  to  us,  and  spoken  to  our  hearts,  through  them.  I 
should  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  man  who  cannot  hear  God 
speak  to  him  in  the  story  of  creation  and  the  fall  will  never  hear 
God’s  voice  anywhere.  But  that  does  not  make  the  first  chapter 
of  Genesis  science,  not  the  third  chapter  history.  And  what  is 
of  authority  in  these  chapters  is  not  the  quasi-scientific  or  quasi- 
historical  form,  but  the  message,  which  through  them  comes  to 
the  heart,  of  God’s  creative  wisdom  and  power,  of  man’s  native 
kinship  to  God,  of  his  calling  to  rule  over  nature,  of  his  sin,  of 
God’s  judgment  and  mercy.’’ 

“It  is  unfortunate,  I  think,  that  the  questions  as  to  man’s 
nature  have  been  usually  discussed  in  theology  in  connection 
what  is  called  his  original  state.  The  question,  What  is  man? 
has  been  treated  as  if  it  were  convertible  with  the  question,  What 


6o  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


was  Adam?  But  it  is  plain  that  we  do  not  stand  in  the  same 

x 

relation  to  these  two  questions.  Man  is  before  us,  or  rather  in 
us;  we  have  the  amplest  opportunity  for  investigating  his  nature 
and  constitution,  and  we  have  the  whole  range  of  Scripture  to  guide 
and  correct  our  interpretation  of  these  accessible  facts.  But  Adam 
is  not  within  our  reach  at  all;  and  it  is  simply  exposing  ourselves, 
without  any  necessity  whatever,  to  refutation  by  the  progress  of 
physical  or  archaeological  science,  when  we  advance  statements 
about  the  primitive  condition  of  man  which  have  not  only  a 
religious  but  a  physical  and  historical  content.  No  one  who  knows 
what  science  or  history  is  can  imagine  that  either  science  or  his¬ 
tory  is  to  be  found  in  the  first  three  chapters  of  Genesis;  and  it 
will  be  plain,  I  think,  at  a  further  stage,  that  to  seek  for  them  is  quite 
unnecessary  to  the  Christian  position.  Man’s  nature  is  revealed  by 
what  he  is,  interpreted  by  the  course  of  God’s  dealings  wdth  him;  it  is 
revealed  above  all,  and  his  destiny  along  with  it,  in  Jesus  Christ 
our  Lord;  and  it  is  as  gratuitous  as  it  is  futile  to  seek  to  discover 
it  in  all  its  integrity  in  a  first  man.  The  plain  truth,  and  we  have 
no  reason  to  hide  it,  is  that  we  do  not  know  the  beginnings  of 
man’s  life,  of  his  history,  of  his  sin;  we  do  not  know  them  histor¬ 
ically,  on  historical  evidence;  and  we  should  be  content  to  let 
them  remain  in  the  dark  till  science  throws  what  light  it  can  upon 
them.  The  unity  of  the  human  race — the  organic  connection 
of  all  its  members — the  identitv  in  all  of  that  double  relation  to 

J 

nature  and  to  God — the  universalitv  of  the  consciousness  which 

J 

Christians  call  sin — these  are  facts,  whatever  our  ignorance  may 
be  of  the  original  state  of  man,  and  of  his  original  righteousness.”1 

5.  The  most  distinguished  minister  and  scholar  in 
the  Presbyterian  Church  today,  in  any  land,  is  the 
Rev.  Sir  George  Adam  Smith,  (1856 — ),  Principal  of 
Aberdeen  University. 

At  the  age  of  23  Smith  was  appointed  to  take  the 
place  of  W.  Robertson  Smith  as  Professor  of  Oriental 
Languages  and  Old  Testament  Exegesis  in  the  Univer¬ 
sity  of  Aberdeen.  From  1882  to  1892  he  was  pastor 
of  Oueen’s  Cross  Free  Church  in  Aberdeen,  after  which 
he  became  professor  of  Old  Testament  Fanguage, 
Fiterature,  and  Theology  in  the  Free  Church  College, 
Glasgow.  Since  1909  he  has  been  Principal  of  Aber¬ 
deen  University. 

Because  of  certain  positions  taken  in  his  book, 
Modern  Criticism  and  the  Preachhig  of  the  Old  Testament 


1  Studies  in  Theology ,  pp.  217,  218,  78 


EVOL  UEION  and  RRESB YEERIANISM  6 1 


(1901),  an  attempt  was  made  to  bring  Dr.  Smith 
before  the  General  Assembly  for  trial.  The  attempt 
collapsed,  owing  to  the  support  given  Dr.  Smith  by 
such  prominent  leaders  as  Dr.  Robert  Rainy,  Dr.  James 
Orr,  and  Dr.  Ross  Taylor,  as  well  as  to  the  fact  that 
the  United  Free  Church  of  Scotland  had  come  to  see 
the  value  of  the  free  critical  study  of  the  Old  Testament. 
In  defending  Dr.  Smith  Dr.  Orr  said:  “Whatever 
they  might  think  of  Professor  Smith’s  speculations, 
there  could  be  but  one  opinion  among  them  that  he 
at  least  had  nobly  proved  in  the  past  his  faith,  zeal, 
and  evangelical  fidelitv,  by  works  that  had  made  his 
name  a  household  word  and  an  honour;  that  he  had 
preached  a  living  gospel,  and  had  been  made  instru¬ 
mental,  as  few  were,  by  tongue  of  fire  and  vivid  im¬ 
agination  and  prophetic  fervour  to  kindle  faith  and 
move  to  godliness  in  an  age  far  lost  to  prophetic  ideals. 
Rather  than  accentuate  by  continual  controversy  and 
new  Committees,  the  points  on  which  they  might 
unhappily  differ,  let  them  unite  in  thanking  God  for 
the  gilt  He  had  given  in  him,  and  for  the  work  he  had 
been  enabled  to  accomplish  for  God’s  glory.”1 

Dr.  Smith  has  written  a  number  of  volumes  marked 
by  wide  learning  and  accurate  scholarship;  but  it  is 
chiefly  through  his  commentaries  on  Isaiah  and  the 
Minor  Prophets  that  he  has  spoken  to  the  mind  and 
heart  and  conscience  of  the  Church.  “In  them,” 
writes  Rev.  Paul  Dwight  Moody,  son  of  Dwight  L. 
Moody,  “he  has  blazed  a  way  for  Old  Testament 
expositors,  as  he  was  the  first  to  write  constructively 
and  devotionally  from  the  modern  or  critical  stand¬ 
point.  For  these  are  expositions  pure  and  simple, 
yet  more  scholarly  than  many  commentaries  and  more 
interesting  and  readable  than  some  novels  and  most 
sermons,  for  his  style  is  always  graphic,  vivid  and  clear. 
They  are  popular  in  the  best  sense,  and  have  done 


1  The  Religious  Controversies  of  Scotland ,  by  the  Rev  Henry  F.  Henderson,  M 
A.,  p.  228.  T.  &  T.  Clark,  Edinburgh.  1905. 


62  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


more  to  help  many  to  a  proper  conception  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  Old  Testament  criticism  than  perhaps 
any  other  book  in  this  generation.” 

“Professor  George  Adam  Smith,”  writes  Dr.  Bras- 
tow,  “the  friend,  colaborer,  and  biographer  of  Drum¬ 
mond,  is  justly  recognized  as  one  of  the  most  gifted 
preachers  as  well  as  teachers  of  Scotland.  Not  only 
the  volume  of  sermons  on  a  variety  of  interesting 
subjects,  dating  back  to  the  period  of  his  active  min¬ 
istry  in  the  church,  that  were  published  last  year 
[1904],  but  the  exceedingly  attractive  and  helpful 
work  on  the  book  of  Isaiah,  illustrate  the  value,  not 
for  the  preacher  alone  but  for  the  teacher  as  well,  of 
a  decade  or  more  of  experience  in  pastoral  life.  Pro¬ 
fessor  Smith’s  Biblical  work  discloses  first  of  all,  of 
course,  the  spirit  of  the  scholar,  but  hardly  less  the 
spirit  of  the  preacher.  And  these  discourses,  while 
they  disclose  preeminently  the  pastoral  spirit,  reveal 
also  the  scholar ...  In  all  his  critical  estimates  he  would 
conserve  a  more  genuine  reverence  for  the  Bible,  and 
his  apprehension  of  the  worth  of  its  religious  teachings 
and  his  interpretation  of  their  practical  moral  import 
are  just,  discriminating,  positive,  and  clear.  .  .  .Such 
discourses  in  the  hands  of  such  an  interpreter  illus¬ 
trate  the  vast  resources  for  the  preacher  of  the  Old 
Testament  as  it  is  laid  open  to  us  by  modern  Biblical 
studies.  Their  evangelical  quality,  so  simple  and 
genuine,  so  wholly  free  from  all  cant  and  convention¬ 
ality,  is  also  an  element  of  strength ....  The  Free 
churches  of  Scotland,  not  less  than  those  of  England, 
are  to  be  congratulated  upon  the  gift  of  men  who 
know  well  how  to  make  tributary  their  scholarly 
acquisitions  and  their  literary  culture  to  the  inter¬ 
pretation  of  the  great  realities  of  the  Gospel  of  Re¬ 
demption  and  to  the  higher  moral  and  religious  welfare 
of  men.”1 


1  The  Modern  Pulpit ,  by  Lewis  O.  Brastow,  D.  D.,  Professor  of  Practical  Theol¬ 
ogy  in  Yale  University,  pp.  312,  313,  316.  Geo.  H.  Doran  Co.  1906. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  63 


What  are  the  views  of  this  distinguished  scholar  and 
preacher  on  evolution  and  inerrancy? 

In  none  of  his  writings  has  Dr.  Smith  given  explicit 
expression  to  his  views  on  evolution;  but  one  may 
infer  from  the  sympathetic  spirit  in  which  he  has 
written  the  biography  of  Henry  Drummond  that  he 
finds  nothing  in  the  theory  that  is  incompatible  with 
Christianity  as  interpreted  by  Presbyterians.  A  note 
from  Dr.  Smith  confirms  this  inference.1 

Dr.  Smith  has  left  us  in  no  doubt  as  to  his  view  of 
the  theory  of  verbal  inerrancy.  As  a  pastor,  as  a 
teacher  of  young  men,  and  as  biographer  of  Henry 
Drummond,  to  whom  in  a  remarkable  way  men  and 
women  were  drawn  to  confide  their  religious  difficul¬ 
ties,  Dr.  Smith  has  had  ample  opportunity  to  see  the 
harm  done  to  mind  and  heart  and  faith  by  this  im¬ 
possible  theory.  He  writes  at  length,  and  with  the 
force  and  feeling  of  a  man  who  has  at  heart  the  in¬ 
terests  of  true  religion:— 

“The  Christian  Church  has  twice  over  forgotten  the  liberty 
wherewith  Christ  has  made  her  free;  and  in  two  directions  has 
attempted  to  enforce  the  literal  acceptance  of  the  Old  Testament, 
with  results,  in  both  cases,  disastrous  to  the  interests  of  religion. 

“We  are  all  aware  that  at  various  periods  in  the  history  of 
Christendom  a  spirit  arose  amongst  its  leaders  not  very  different 
from  that  which  moved  so  large  a  party  in  the  primitive  Church, 
and  even  some  of  the  Apostles  themselves,  to  insist  upon  the 
letter  of  the  Law  of  Moses  as  binding  upon  all  Christians.  In 
later  ages  the  representatives  of  this  spirit  did  not  propose,  as 
those  Jewish  Christians  did,  to  enforce  circumcision,  sacrifice, 
and  other  items  of  the  Mosaic  ritual;  but  in  the  same  temper 
of  literal  obedience  to  the  Old  Testament  they  effected  what  was 
even  worse.  They  revived  many  of  the  rigours  of  the  Law,  and 
quoted  the  most  cruel  tempers  of  the  old  dispensation,  as  the 
sanction  of  their  own  bigotries  and  persecutions.  No  branch  of 
the  Church  has  been  innocent  of  this  disloyalty  to  her  Lord.  If 
the  tyrants  and  inquisitors  of  the  Roman  Church,  in  the  days  of 
its  imperial  power,  have  claimed  the  relentlessness  of  the  old  law 
as  authority  for  their  unspeakable  cruelties  to  those  whom  they 
deemed  heretics,  our  own  Puritan  fathers,  on  both  sides  of  the 


1  See  Appendix  E. 


64  EVOL  UTION  and  PRESB  Y  PERI  AN  I SM 


Atlantic,  have  not  hesitated  to  defend  their  intolerance  of  opin¬ 
ions  which  differed  from  their  own,  their  purchase  and  holding 
of  slaves,  their  harshness  to  criminals,  and  their  torture  and  murder 
of  witches,  by  an  appeal  to  the  laws  and  customs  of  Israel.  .  .  .The 
literal  enforcement  of  the  Old  Testament,  in  disloyalty  to  Christ, 
should  be  called  ‘a  millstone  about  the  neck  of  Christianity.’ 
From  the  first  generation  of  the  Church  to  the  last  but  one,  the 
theory  of  the  equal  and  lasting  divinity  of  the  Jewish  Scriptures 
has  been  fertile  in  casuistry,  bigotry  and  cruel  oppression  of  every 
kind. 

“But  while  all  that  is  now  mainly  a  matter  of  historical  interest, 
we  have  suffered  in  our  own  generation,  and  to  a  high  degree 
still  suffer,  from  the  enforcement  of  the  same  spirit,  operating  in 
another  direction.  The  advocates  and  agents  of  Biblical  Criti¬ 
cism  have  often  been  charged  with  the  creation  of  sceptics,  and 
we  may  fully  admit  that  where  criticism  has  been  conducted  in 
a  purely  empirical  spirit  and  without  loyalty  to  Christ,  it  has  shaken 
the  belief  of  some  in  the  fundamentals  of  religion,  distracted  others 
from  the  zealous  service  of  God,  and  benumbed  the  preaching  of 
Christ’s  gospel.  Yet  anyone  who  has  had  practical  dealings  with 
the  doubt  and  religious  bewilderment  of  his  day  can  testify  that 
those  who  have  been  led  into  unbelief  by  modern  criticism  are  not 
for  one  moment  to  be  compared  in  number  with  those  who  have 
fallen  from  faith  over  the  edge  of  the  opposite  extreme.  The 
dogma  of  a  verbal  inspiration,  the  dogma  of  the  equal  divinity 
of  all  parts  of  Scripture,  the  refusal  to  see  any  development, 
either  from  the  ethnic  religions  to  the  religion  of  Israel,  or  any 
development  within  the  religion  of  Israel  itself — all  these  have 
had  a  disastrous  influence  upon  the  religious  thought  and  action 
of  our  time.  They  have  not  only  produced  confusion  in  some  of 
the  holiest  minds  among  us.  They  have  not  only  paralysed  the 
intellects  of  those  who  have  adopted  them,  as  every  mechanical 
conception  of  the  truth  must  do.  But  they  have  been  the  provo¬ 
cation  to  immense  numbers  of  honest  hearts  to  cast  off  religion 
altogether.  Men  have  been  trained  in  the  belief  that  the  holiest 
elements  of  our  Creed,  nay  the  assurance  of  the  existence  and 
love  of  God  Himself,  are  bound  up  with  the  literal  acceptance  of 
the  whole  Bible,  of  which  the  Old  Testament  forms  by  much  the 
greater  part;  so  that  whenever  their  minds  awoke  to  the  irrecon¬ 
cilable  discrepancies  of  the  Old  Testament  text,  or  their  con¬ 
sciences  to  the  narrow  and  violent  temper  of  its  customs,  and  they 
could  no  longer  believe  in  it,  as  the  equal  and  consistent  message 
of  God  to  men,  their  whole  faith  in  Him,  suspended  from  their 
earliest  years  upon  this  impossible  view  of  it,  was  in  danger  of 
failing  them,  and  in  innumerable  cases  did  fail  them  for  the  rest 
of  their  lives. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  65 


“Like  every  man  who  has  read  a  little  and  thought  a  little,  I 
was  aware  of  this  great  and  tragic  commonplace  of  our  day.  But 
during  the  last  year  I  have  come  across  so  many  instances  of  it — 
each  the  story  of  a  human  soul — that  it  has  become  vivid  and 
burning  in  my  mind.  It  has  been  my  privilege  to  go  carefully 
through  the  correspondence  of  one  who,  probably  more  than  any 
of  our  contemporaries,  was  consulted  by  persons  of  the  religious 
experiences  which  I  have  described.  .  .  .One  and  all  tell  how  the 
literal  acceptance  of  the  Bible — the  faith  which  finds  in  it  nothing 
erroneous,  nothing  defective,  and  (outside  of  the  sacrifice  and 
Temple)  nothing  temporary — is  what  has  driven  them  from  religion. 
Henrv  Drummond  was  not  a  Biblical  scholar;  he  was  not  an 
authority  on  the  Old  Testament.  But  the  large  trust  which  his 
personalitv  and  his  writings  so  magically  produced,  moved  men 
and  women  to  address  to  him  all  kinds  of  questions.  It  is  aston¬ 
ishing  how  many  of  these  had  to  do  with  the  Old  Testament:  with 
its  discrepancies,  its  rigorous  laws,  its  pitiless  tempers,  its  open 
treatment  of  sexual  questions,  the  atrocities  which  are  narrated 
by  its  histories  and  sanctioned  by  its  laws.  Unable  upon  the 
lines  of  the  teaching  of  their  youth  to  reconcile  these  with  a  belief 
in  the  goodness  of  God,  the  writers  had  abandoned,  or  were  about 
to  abandon,  the  latter;  yet  they  eagerly  sought  an  explanation 
which  would  save  them  from  such  a  disaster. 

“I  know  no  sadder  tragedy  than  this  innumerably  repeated 
one,  nor  any  service  which  it  were  better  worth  doing  than  the 
attempt  to  help  men  out  of  its  perplexities.  I  firmly  believe  that 
such  an  attempt  must  lie  along  the  lines  indicated  by  Christ  and 
His  Apostles,  and  followed  by  the  textual  and  historical  criticism 
’which  takes  its  charter  from  Christ  Himself.  And  if  I  am  right, 
then  we  shall  find  in  the  task  on  which  we  have  entered  with  this 
lecture,  interests  and  responsibilities  which  are  not  merely  scho¬ 
lastic  or  historical,  but  thoroughly  evangelical — concerned  with 
faith,  and  the  assistance  of  souls  in  darkness,  and  the  equipment 
of  the  Church  of  Christ  for  her  ministry  of  God’s  Word.”1 

Because  such  an  extract,  however  true,  is  in  the  na¬ 
ture  of  the  case  more  or  less  destructive  of  older  views, 
a  few  paragraphs  from  one  of  Dr.  Smith’s  sermons  may 
be  added  showing  the  positive  and  constructive  side 
of  his  view  of  the  Bible.  In  his  sermon  on  The  JVord 
of  God  he  says: — 

‘It  is  true  that  parts  of  the  Bible  have  been  used  throughout 
all  the  Christian  centuries — used  frequently  and  by  all  the  Churches 


1  Modern  Criticism  and  the  Preaching  oj  the  Old  Testament ,  by  George  Adam 
Smith,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  pp.  23-28.  George  H.  Doran  Co.  190X. 


66  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


— to  defend  the  divine  right  of  tyrants,  and  to  sanction  the  worst 
forms  of  intolerance.  Yet  it  would  be  easy  to  show  that  such 
abuses  were  due  never  to  the  Bible  itself,  but  to  misinterpretations, 
especially  of  the  Old  Testament — misinterpretations  made  in 
disloyalty  to  Christ’s  teaching  about  the  latter  in  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  and  in  ignorance  of  His  Spirit.  It  would  be  easy  to 
show  that  such  abuses  were  exceptional,  and  that  in  spite  of  them 
the  Bible  has  been  the  charter  of  the  freedom  of  the  peoples  of 
Europe,  and  the  strongest  inspiration  of  their  private  and  public 
virtues — for  instance,  that  the  more  debasing  vices,  which  had 
been  tolerated  alike  by  the  philosophers  and  statesmen  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  were  by  the  influence  of  the  Mosaic  Law  for  the 
first  time  rebuked  and  restrained;  and  so  much  restrained  that 
the  very  names  of  some  of  them  have  disappeared  from  popular 
knowledge.  One  could  prove  that  the  Bible  built  the  home  and 
provoked  the  beginnings  of  popular  education;  that  it  moulded 
new  languages;  that  it  articulated  and  enforced  the  efforts  of 
young  nations  towards  independence  and  their  destined  -work  for 
humanity;  that  it  brought  health  to  art  and  literature;  that  it 
enlightened  the  ignorant  and  ennobled  the  humble;  that  it  gave 
courage  to  lonelv  men  to  stand  alone  for  truth  and  justice;  and 
that  it  endowed  the  oppressed  poor  of  all  the  centuries  with  an 
energy  and  a  hope  of  struggle  with  which  nothing  else  could  have 
inspired  them.  No  history  has  illustrated  this  more  than  our  own 
in  Scotland .... 

“Let  us  remember  one  great  fact  about  Revelation.  Revelation 
when  it  comes  from  God  to  man,  has  to  take  man  as  it  finds  him. 
It  has  to  work  upon  him  through  the  religious  ideas  and  customs 
which  he  already  possesses.  It  must  use  the  language,  the  symbols, 
and  to  some  extent  the  intellectual  ideas  and  moral  principles  by 
which  he  already  lives.  New  truths  about  God  have  to  grow  out 
of  the  sheaths  of  old  ones,  and  for  a  time  they  must  mix  with 
the  long-lingering  influences  of  the  latter.  The  moral  education 
of  the  race  can  only  be  a  gradual  and  a  slow  process.  In  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  our  Lord  Himself  has  clearly  expounded 
the  fact  of  a  progressive  revelation  under  the  Old  Testament. 
He  rebuked  tempers  and  He  abrogated  laws,  which  as  He  says 
were  permitted  to  men  for  the  hardness  of  their  hearts.  Thus 
through  Him  the  Bible  itself  contains  the  correction  of  its  rudi¬ 
mentary  stages:  the  enlargement  of  their  ideals:  the  full  puri¬ 
fication  of  all  their  spirit.  But  while  thus  judging  the  earlier 
parts  of  the  Bible  our  Lord  equally  affirmed  that  a  divine,  creative 
power  had  been  at  work  in  the  religion  of  His  people  from  the 
very  first.  And  today  there  is  not  one  of  the  most  grudging 
critics  of  the  Old  Testament  who  is  able  to  deny  that,  in  spite  of 
the  low  levels  from  which  the  religion  of  Israel  had  to  start,  there 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  67 


was  present  in  it  from  the  first  a  moral  purpose  and  energy  which 
was  not  present  in  any  of  the  other  religions — the  germ  and  potency 
of  that  perfect  will  of  God,  which  through  it  was  ultimately  re¬ 
vealed  to  man  .... 

“Let  us  rather  measure  the  Bible  by  the  unity  of  ethical  purpose 
wThich  it  manifests  from  first  to  last,  by  the  completeness  with 
which  it  leaves  behind  every  trace  of  a  defective  morality,  and  by 
the  uncompromising  and  invincible  opposition,  which  the  spirit 
of  it  offers  to  every  political  and  religious  interest,  that  insinuates 
itself  as  a  substitute  for  the  ethical  service  of  God  .... 

“Its  divine  purity  and  unchangeable  sovereignity  are  as  little 
to  be  doubted  as  those  of  conscience  itself.  .  .  . 

“With  a  penetration  and  a  truthfulness,  attempted  by  no  other 
book,  it  uncovers  the  secrets  of  the  human  heart.  Scripture 
gives  my  conscience  new  eyes  to  see  me;  new  lips  to  condemn  me; 
new  ears  to  catch  those  voices  of  truth  which  murmur  in  my  mind 
wrhat  I  really  am  .... 

“The  story  of  this  Divine  Passion,  which  means  both  our  condem¬ 
nation,  who  have  made  it  necessary  by  our  sins,  and  our  salvation, 
if  we  feel  the  penitence  wrhich  it  inspires  as  nothing  else  can,  is 
found  in  these  pages  and  in  these  alone.  Hence,  and  hence  only, 
their  divine  validity.  Not  their  inerrancy;  not  that  they  answer 
to  this  or  that  theory  of  inspiration;  but  that  independent  of  all 
theories,  whether  old  or  new,  they  tell  to  men  the  story  of  the 
travailing  and  suffering  Love  of  God:  the  one  Passion,  the  one 
Victory  in  all  the  history  of  time  which  can  never  grow7  old,  nor 
lose  its  indispensable  force  for  the  sinful  hearts  of  God’s  children; 
clean  and  enduring  forever ;  needing  nothing,  as  Love  needs  nothing 
of  external  authority  or  argument,  to  prove  itself  to  the  heart 
that  requires  it.’’1 

Since  Dr.  Smith  is  looked  upon  by  many  as  among 
the  more  radical  of  the  higher  critics,  it  will  be  in¬ 
structive,  in  connection  with  the  quotations  given 
above,  to  recall  a  description  of  the  higher  critic  that 
was  reprinted  in  some  of  our  religious  papers:  “The 
Higher  Critic  moves  the  light  away,  a  little  at  a  time, 
and  finally  takes  it  out  of  sight .  .  .  .  If  I  understand  the 
average  Higher  Critic,  he  is  an  egotist  who  thinks  him¬ 
self  above  the  Bible  and  looks  down  upon  it .  .  .  .  He  is 
like  the  assassin  who  examines  the  bodv  to  find  the 

J 

1  The  Forgiveness  of  Sins ,  by  George  Adam  Smith,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  pp.  31,  34, 
35,  40,  46,  49.  George  H.  Doran.  1904. 


68  EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


place  where  a  blow  will  be  fatal.”1  Ignorance  and 
prejudice  can  go  no  further.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
Church  has  never  in  any  age  had  a  body  of  men  of 
finer  scholarship,  of  more  reverent  spirit,  or  of  higher 
Christian  Character,  than  the  school  of  Biblical  critics 
to  which  Dr.  Smith  belongs.  They  have  done  more 
to  throw  light  upon  the  Bible — its  meaning,  stucture, 
and  growth — than  any  other  men  of  our  day.2 

I  have  thus  given  the  views  of  five  of  the  most 
widely  known  Presbyterian  ministers  of  the  past  fifty 
years  on  the  theory  of  evolution  and  the  theory  of 
verbal  inerrancy.  To  summarize: — 

Dr.  Rainy  accepted  the  principle  of  evolution  as 
applicable  both  to  nature  in  general  and  to  man  in 
particular,  and  thought  that  theologians  might  “be 
perfectly  at  ease”  on  the  subject.  He  was  disposed 
to  hold  the  theory  of  inerrancy,  although  “under 
difficulties ;”but  he  regarded  the  minor  points  raised 
by  it  as  “in  a  large  degree  despicable”  and  “he  refused 
out  and  out  to  identify  this  view  with  inspiration.” 

Professor  Drummond  accepted  the  theory  of  evolu¬ 
tion,  believing  its  application  to  the  Bible  and  theology 
to  be  of  great  value.  He  rejected  the  theory  of  iner¬ 
rancy  as  a  “fundamental  mistake”  and  as  having  a 
“paralyzing  and  stunting  effect”  on  thought. 

Dr.  Orr  accepted  the  theory  of  evolution  in  general, 
believing  that  many  of  our  ideas  concerning  God’s 
relation  to  the  world  “have  received  firmer  grounding 
in  the  best  thought  of  evolutionary  science;”  but  he 
did  not  accept  the  evolutionary  theory  of  man’s  descent 
by  slow  gradations.  The  theory  of  inerrancy  he  re¬ 
jected,  holding  it  to  be  “a  violent  assumption  which 
there  is  nothing  in  the  Bible  to  support,”  and  affirming 
that  to  make  belief  in  the  Bible  as  a  revelation  of  God’s 

1  The  Bible  and  its  Enemies ,  by  William  Jennings  Bryan,  pp.  15,  16.  Bible 
Institute  and  Colportage  Association.  1921. 

2  See  Appendix  F. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  69 


character  and  will  depend  on  belief  in  the  theory  of 
inerrancy  is  “a  most  suicidal  position.” 

Dr.  Denney  considered  evolution  to  be  “probably 
the  most  immediately  and  widely  influential  theory 
ever  introduced  to  human  intelligence,”  and  with 
insight  and  ability  sought  to  adjust  parts  ot  the  older 
theology  to  evolutionary  thought.  For  the  theory  of 
inerrancy  he  “cared  not  one  straw.” 

Dr.  Smith  accepts  the  theory  of  evolution  finding 
in  it  nothing  incompatible  with  Christianity.  The 
theory  ot  inerrancy,  and  especially  the  literal  accept¬ 
ance  and  enforcement  ot  the  Old  Testament,  he  re¬ 
gards  as  “a  mill-stone  about  the  neck  ot  Christianity;” 
a  theory  “fertile  in  casuistry,  bigotry,  and  cruel  op¬ 
pression  ot  every  kind.” 

These  men  were  born  and  reared  in  the  Presbyterian 
Church  and  were  therefore  from  childhood  tamiliar 
with  its  traditions,  its  doctrines,  its  worship,  and  its 
historic  spirit.  They  all  achieved  distinction  as  schol¬ 
ars  and  thinkers,1  and  they  were  practically  unani¬ 
mous  in  accepting  the  theory  ot  evolution  and  rejecting 
the  theory  ot  verbal  inspiration.  Yet  so  tar  trom 
having  been  suspected  by  their  Church  of  a  departure 
trom  anything  fundamental  to  Presbyterianism — and 
Presbyterianism  is  supposed  to  be  pretty  well  under¬ 
stood  in  Scotland,  called  by  Schaff  “the  classical  soil 
ot  Presbyterian  Christianity” — they  were  all  honored 
with  the  most  responsible  position  in  the  gift  of  their 
Church,  that  of  training  its  young  men  for  the  min- 
istrv. 

j 

From  the  facts  given  in  this  chapter,  Presbyterians 
may  draw  their  own  conclusion  as  to  the  compatibility 
ol  evolution  with  the  historic  faith  of  their  Church. 


1  While  Henry  Drummond  was  a  gifted  writer  and  speaker,  he  cannot  be  ranked 
high  as  a  scholar  o  thinker. 


Chapter  V. 


Two  Types  of  Presbyterianism. 


72  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


This  is  the  point  at  which  ‘broad’  churchism  is  in  the  right 
against  an  evangelical  Christianity  which  has  not  learned  to 
distinguish  between  its  faith — in  which  it  is  unassailable — and 
inherited  forms  of  doctrine  which  have  been  unreflectingly  identi¬ 
fied  with  it.  Natural  as  such  identification  may  be,  and  painful 
as  it  may  be  to  separate  in  thought  things  which  have  coalesced 
in  strong  and  sacred  feelings,  there  is  nothing  more  certain  than 
that  the  distinction  must  be  recognized  if  evangelical  Christians 
are  to  maintain  their  intellectual  integrity,  and  preach  the  gospel 
in  a  world  which  is  intellectually  free.  We  are  bound  to  Christ, 
and  would  see  all  men  so  bound;  but  we  must  leave  it  to  Christ 
to  establish  His  ascendency  over  men  in  His  own  way — by  the 
power  of  what  He  is  and  of  what  He  has  done — and  not  seek  to 
secure  it  beforehand  by  the  imposition  of  chains  of  our  forging. — 
James  Denney. 


Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  the  clang  of  controversy,  whether 
admirable  from  the  ethical  point  of  view  or  not,  has  ever  been  an 
important  and  necessary  condition  of  intellectual  progress.  At  no 
time  has  either  a  person  or  a  principle  become  epoch-making 
without  having  first  encountered  criticism  and  condemnation. 
Some  element  of  antagonism  seems  necessary  for  the  propagation 
of  truth.  It  is  not  necessarily  a  waste  of  time,  therefore,  as  some 
good  men  have  supposed,  when  a  Church  finds  herself  engaged  in 
bitter  and  prolonged  theological  strife.  So  far  from  this,  it  is  the 
means  which  Divine  Providence  employs  for  leading  the  Church 
into  larger  liberty  and  into  fuller  possession  of  the  truth,  which 
is  her  best  heritage. — Henry  F.  Henderson. 


EVOL UTION  and  PRESB Y T ERIANISM  73 


CHAPTER  V. 


In  the  preceding  chapter  only  Scotch  Presbyterians 
jd>  1  have  been  quoted.  Why  no  American  Presbyterians? 
j  .  'The  answer  is  that,  for  the  purposes  of  this  pamphlet, 
there  are  none  to  quote — none  that  are  at  all  repre- 
sentative.  The  ministry  of  the  x^merican  Presbyterian 
'Church  has  no  doubt  had  its  share  of  strong  men,  men 
of  learning  and  ability;  but  it  has  had  no  progressive 
thinkers  or  scholars  of  note — none  at  least  who  have 
left  their  impress  upon  the  Church,  much  less  upon 
,  the  religious  thought  of  the  nation.  The  contrast  in 
this  respect  between  the  two  great  branches  of  Pres- 
^ife^byterianism — the  Scotch  and  the  American¬ 


os  so 


t&Jgf  striking  as  to  justify  a  moment’s  attention. 

Of  the  extreme  conservatism  of  American  Presby- 
_  /  tenanism,  and  its  infertility  in  progressive  thought, 
'  ,  there  can  be  little  question.  One  of  its  historians  has 

described  the  Presbyterian  Church  as  ‘The  most  con- 
nV  t \Ktri.  servative  and  most  theological  of  the  xTmerican 
'  ^ui^vwChurches.”1  Of  the  twelve  leading  progressive  think- 
njupfcfy  ers  and  preachers  discussed  in  Buckham’s  Progressive 
Religious  Thought  in  America  (1919)  and  Hoyt’s  The 
^  ,  Pulpit  and  American  Life  (1921),  not  one  belonged  to 

Presbyterian  Church.  The  most  competent  foreign 
observer  of  American  life,  the  late  James  Bryce,  says: 
he  new  ideas  continued  to  grow,  and  the  sentiment 
IsCww  O  favour  of  letting  clergymen  as  well  as  lay  church 
i  t&A  members  put  a  lax  construction  on  the  doctrinal 
standards  drawn  up  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centur^esJ  has  spread  as  widely  in  Scotland  as  in  Eng- 
land.  The  Presbyterian  Churches  in  America  [italics 
7  '  mine]  and  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  now  stand 

>  '  A  CAa  almost  alone  among  the  larger  Christian  bodies  in 
<  retaining  something  of  the  ancient  rigidity.  Even  the 

Roman  Church  begins  to  feel  the  solvent  power  of 

A  History  oj  the  Presbyterian  Churches  in  the  United  States ,  by  Robert  Ellis 
Thompson,  D.  D.,  p.  272.  Scribner's  Sons.  1895. 


InAt* 1 


74  EVOL  UP  I  ON  and  PRESB  Y  T ER1  AN  ISM 


these  researches.”1  A  seminary  professor  writes  that, 
excepting  Union  Theological  Seminary,  New  York, 
which  is  no  longer  under  Presbyterian  control,  not  a 
single  Presbyterian  Seminary  in  this  country  has 
published  in  our  generation  a  significant  book.  “Until 
after  the  division  of  1837,”  says  Dr.  Thompson, 
“American  Presbyterianism  made  no  important  addi¬ 
tion  to  the  lierature  of  theology.”2  It  has  made  many 
additions  since  then,  some  of  them  very  important; 
but  their  importance  does  not  lie  in  their  original  or 
progressive  character.  At  the  present  time,  for  works 
of  real  scholarship  in  practically  all  fields  of  religious 
thought,  we  are  almost  wholly  dependent  on  the  Church 
of  England,  the  Presbyterian  Churches  of  Scotland, 
and  the  Congregational  Church. 

The  difference  between  American  and  Scotch  Pres¬ 
byterians  in  their  attitude  towards  modern  thought  is 
not  easy  to  account  for,  but  a  few  facts  may  be  men¬ 
tioned  that  throw  some  light  on  the  subject. 

(1)  Presbyterian  Churches-  are  supposed  to  be 
Calvinistic;  but  Calvinism  may  be  appraised  from  two 
very  different  standpoints.  On  the  one  hand  it  may 
be  thought  of  as  a  great  intellectual,  ethical,  and  re¬ 
ligious  principle — the  principle  of  the  sovereignty  of 
God, which  is  the  sovereignty  of  truth  and  righteousness, 
in  the  mind  and  heart  and  will  of  man.  This  is  a 
radical  and  progressive  principle.  In  the  last  analysis, 
obedience  to  this  principle  means  that  between  man, 
and  God  speaking  to  him  through  his  reason  and 
conscience,  nothing  can  interpose  itself  as  a  final  au¬ 
thority.  It  therefore  means  freedom,  but  it  is  freedom 
of  a  very  responsible  kind — far  removed  from  anything 
of  the  nature  of  license  or  personal  whim.  This  prin¬ 
ciple  has  rarely  found  more  notable  exemplification 
than  in  the  life  and  work  of  John  Calvin.3 

1  Studies  in  Contemporary  Biography ,  p.  313.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  the 
Macmillan  Co. 

2  A  History  of  the  Presbyterian  Churches  in  the  United  States ,  p.  143. 

3  This  great  principle  is  thus  set  forth  in  the  Confession  of  Faith,  XX:2:  “God 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  75 


On  the  other  hand  Calvinism  may  be  regarded  as 
a  system  of  doctrine.  A  word  is  necessary  here  con¬ 
cerning  distinctive  doctrinal  Calvinism,  tor  probably 
very  few  Presbyterians  know  just  what  it  is.  In 
general  it  may  be  said  that  the  Presbyterian  standards 
embody  two  sets  of  doctrines.  In  one  set  are  such 
doctrines  as  the  trinity,  the  deity  ot  Christ,  the  atone¬ 
ment,  justification  by  faith,  regeneration,  sanctification, 
and  so  forth.  These  doctrines,  or  the  most  important 
of  them,  constitute  the  foundation  oi  all  creeds  that 
are  known  as  orthodox  and  evangelical,  and  they  are 
held  by  non-Calvinists  (Methodists,  for  example)  as 
well  as  by  Calvinists.  In  the  other  set  of  doctrines  are 
absolute  predestination  (issuing  in  unconditional  elec¬ 
tion  and  its  corollary,  reprobation  or  preterition),  total 
depravity,  limited  atonement,  irresistible  grace,  and 
final  perseverance.  It  is  these  latter  that  constitute 
distinctive  doctrinal  Calvinism.  While  Calvin  did  not 
originate  these  doctrines,  he  gave  them  such  clearness 
oi  statement,  carried  certain  of  them  so  uncompro¬ 
misingly  to  their  logical  conclusion,  and  made  them  so 
prominent  in  his  system  of  theology,  that  they  have 
ever  since  been  associated  with  his  name.  They  later 
came  to  be  known  as  the  Five  Points  oi  Calvinism. 

These  two  conceptions  of  Calvinism  are  distinctly 
separable.  As  an  intellectual,  ethical,  and  religious 
principle  Calvinism  is  progressive.  As  a  doctrinal 
system  it  is  in  part  static  or  obsolescent.  A  man  may 
accept  in  toto  the  doctrinal  system  of  Calvin  and  yet 
be  an  entire  stranger  to  the  spirit  of  the  great  reformer; 

alone  is  Lord  of  the  conscience,  and  hath  left  it  free  from  the  doctrines  and  com¬ 
mandments  of  men  which  are  in  any  thing  contrary  to  his  word,  or  beside  it  in 
matters  of  faith  or  worship.  So  that  to  believe  such  doctrines,  or  to  obey  such 
commandments  out  of  conscience,  is  to  betray  true  liberty  of  conscience;  and 
the  requiring  an  implicit  faith,  and  an  absolute  and  blind  obedience,  is  to  destroy 
liberty  of  conscience,  and  reason  also  ”  Of  this  paragraph  Dr.  Schaff  says:  “The 
Confession  expresses  for  the  first  time  among  the  confessions  of  faith,  whether 
consistently  or  not,  the  true  principle  of  religious  liberty.  ...  in  the  noble  senti¬ 
ment  of  Chapter  XX:2.”  ( The  Creeds  of  Christendom ,  by  Philip  Schaff,  D.  D., 

LL.  D.,  vol.  I.,  p.  799.  Harper  Bros.  1899). 


7 6  EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


while  a  man  may  reject  essential  parts  of  the  system 
and  yet  be  a  true  Calvinist. 

It  is  an  easy  matter  to  show  that  John  Calvin  (1509- 
1564)  was  essentially  progressive,  but  his  progressive¬ 
ness  was  of  the  kind  that  is  the  truest  conservatism. 
Born  and  reared  in  the  most  dogmatic  of  Churches — 
the  Catholic — and  destined  by  his  father  for  the  priest¬ 
hood,  Calvin  left  the  faith  of  his  parents  and  of  his 
early  years  and  became  the  most  radical  opponent  of 
Catholicism,  and  the  greatest  leader  of  the  Reformation 
in  the  establishment  of  responsible  freedom.1  As  a 
young  man  he  was  deeply  moved  by  the  humanist 
spirit  of  his  age,  becoming  a  classical  before  he  became 
a  Biblical  scholar.  He  was  an  eager  disciple  of  the 
“new  learning/’  “All  the  creative  minds  of  the  Re¬ 
formed  Church,’’  says  A.  M.  Fairbairn,  “were  children 
of  the  Renaissance/'2  While  Calvin  took  over  much 
from  the  past — all  that  approved  itself  to  his  reason 
and  conscience — he  habitually  put  truth  above  tradi¬ 
tion:  “What  was  the  opinion  of  Jerome,”  he  writes, 
“I  regard  not;  let  us  inquire  what  is  truth.” 3  It 
is  this  union  of  continuity  and  change — the  two-fold 
law  of  life — that  always  distinguishes  the  true  thinker 
from  the  inflexible  traditionalist  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  shallow  liberalist  on  the  other. 

An  unwearied  student,  and  the  greatest  Biblical 
scholar  of  the  Reformation,  Calvin  was  singularly 
modern  in  his  interpretation  of  Scripture,  using  the 
philological  and  historical  method  of  exegesis — now 
in  vogue  among  all  scholars — instead  of  the  allegorical 
or  dogmatic.  After  describing  Calvin  as  “the  greatest 
exegete  and  theologian  of  the  Reformation”  and  as 

1  Although  destined  for  the  priesthood,  Calvin  was  never  ordained  to  the  minis¬ 
try  in  either  the  Catholic  or  the  Protestant  Church.  He  was  a  layman. 

J  “Calvin  and  the  Reformed  Church,”  chapter  XI.,  Cambridge  Modern  History , 
p.  348.  1904.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  Macmillan  Co. 

3  Calvin’s  Institutes ,  vol.  I.,  p.  316  (Allen's  edition).  Jerome,  an  eminent  scholar, 
was  the  translator  of  the  Latin  Vulgate,  the  authoritative  Bible  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  He  died  A.  D.  420. 


a 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  77 


‘'one  of  the  greatest  interpreters  of  Scripture  who  ever 
lived,”  Canon  Farrar  says  that  his  commentaries, 
“almost  alone  among  those  of  his  epoch,  are  still  a 
living  force.”  He  further  speaks  of  Calvin’s  “abhor¬ 
rence  of  hollow  orthodoxy;”  or  his  independence  “in 
his  views  on  the  New  Testament;”  of  his  “anticipation 
of  modern  criticism  in  his  views  about  the  Messianic 
prophecies;”  of  his  refusal  to  “defend  or  harmonize 
what  he  regards  as  an  oversight  or  mistake  in  the 
sacred  writers;”  and  adds:  “If  he  held  that  Scripture 
flowed  from  the  very  mouth  of  God,  he  gives  us  no 
explanation  of  his  own  admission  of  inaccuracies  in 
Scripture,  of  his  free  tone  of  criticism,  of  his  almost 
contemptuous  rejection  of  the  whole  sacrificial  and 
ceremonial  law.”1  With  the  same  freedom  Calvin 
would  have  modified  the  most  fundamental  of  theo¬ 
logical  doctrines.  “He  felt,”  writes  Dr.  Arthur  S. 
H  oyt,  “that  the  Trinity  should  be  restated;  that  the 
explanation  of  the  Deity  of  Christ — the  two  natures 
in  one  person — led  to  many  misconceptions.”  The 
fact  is  there  was  no  opinion,  tradition,  or  doctrine, 
however  ancient  or  sacred,  that  Calvin  hesitated  to 
bring  under  the  review  of  his  learning,  his  critical 
reascn,  his  strong  common  sense.  A  man  of  whom 
such  things  can  be  said — a  man  of  such  independence 
and  courage  in  the  pursuit  of  truth — is  far  removed 
from  traditionalism  or  obscurantism. 


Now,  of  these  two  conceptions  of  Calvinism — as  a 
living  principle  and  as  a  doctrinal  system— it  is  the 
latter,  almost  exclusively,  that  American  Presby¬ 
terianism  has  been  concerned  to  preserve  and  per¬ 
petuate.  Our  theologians  have  elaborated  and  sys¬ 
tematized  the  doctrines  of  the  Presbyterian  standards 
in  compendiums  of  theology  that  for  logical  precision 
and  completeness  leave  little  to  be  desired.  But  these 
expositions  are  without  originality,  and,  unmodernized 


1  History  oj  Interpretation,  by  Frederic 
E.  P.  Dutton.  1886. 


W.  Farrar,  D.D.,  F.R.S.,  pp.  342-352. 


78  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


in  any  part,  they  are  becoming  less  and  less  suggestive 
and  convincing;  while  those  parts  that  are  distinctively 
Calvinistic  are  felt  to  be  extreme  and  to  possess  little 
reality  or  stimulus  for  the  mind  of  the  twentieth  cen- 

J 

tury.1  Yet  this  system  of  doctrine  is  bound  by  a  rigid 
ordination  vow  upon  the  conscience  of  our  rising 
ministry.2  The  tendency  of  such  a  procedure  is  to 
make  the  apprehension  and  practice  of  spiritual  Cal¬ 
vinism,  as  a  progressive  principle,  difficult  and  danger¬ 
ous;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  progressive  thinkers 
of  the  American  Presbyterian  Church  have  been  either 
imported  or  deposed — or  they  have  remained  silent. 
Dr.  Ja  mes  McCosh,  former  president  of  Princeton, 
was  from  Scotland;  Dr.  Philip  Schaff,  the  Church 
historian,  was  from  Switzerland;  and  Dr.  John  Kel- 
man,  probably  the  leading  progresssive  thinker  in  the 
American  Presbyterian  pulpit  today,  is  from  Scotland. 
Dr.  J  ames  Woodrow  was  unable  to  retain  his  chair  in 
Columbia  Theological  Seminary,  Columbia,  S.  C.  Dr. 
David  Swing,  Dr.  C.  A.  Briggs,  and  Dr.  Henry  Pre¬ 
served  Smith  were  deposed  from  the  ministry,  and  Dr. 
A.  C.  McGiffert  entered  the  Congregational  Church. 

In  striking  contrast  Scotch  Presbyterianism,  while 
adhering  in  the  main  to  the  doctrinal  system  of  Calvin, 
seems  rarely  to  have  been  without  men  who  had  some¬ 
thing  of  the  progressive  spirit  of  the  great  scholar  and 
reformer.  “To  Scotland,”  says  H.  F.  Henderson,  “has 
fallen  the  honour  of  leading  the  way  among  English- 
speaking  nations  in  the  dispersion  of  religious  ideas 
and  the  discussion  of  theological  problems.  She  has 

1  Take  as  an  example  the  recent  volume  of  theology,  Christian  Salvation,  by  Dr. 
Robert  A.  Webb,  late  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology  in  the  Presbyterian  Sem¬ 
inary,  Louisville,  Ky.  The  method  and  spirit  of  this.  book  seem  to  me  to  be  not 
inaccurately  described  in  the  following  sentence:  “A  hard,  unchanging,  inflexible 
traditionalism,  repeating  with  strong  emphasis  and  defiance  the  scholastic  dog¬ 
matism  of  the  seventeenth  century,  conceding  nothing  to  the  new  modes  of  thought 
that  have  risen  and  grown  strong  since  then,  and  learning  nothing  from  them.” 
( The  Theology  of  the  Reformed  Church  in  its  Fundamental  Principles ,  by  William 
Hastie,  D.  D.,  p.  20.  T.  &  T.  Clark,  Edinburgh.  1904.) 

s  See  Appendix  G. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  79 


had  a  democratic  Church,  and  that,  along  with  a  rigid 
adherence  to  the  Confession  of  Faith,  has  carried  her 
into  this  proud  position.1  As  she  has  been  accus¬ 
tomed  to  bring  all  her  affairs  before  a  popular  tribunal 
of  clerics  and  laymen,  every  apostle  of  progress  that 
has  appeared  in  her  midst  has  had  to  fight  his  way 
through  a  phalanx  of  resistance  and  prejudice,  with 
the  result  that  he  has  always  had  a  large  and  influen¬ 
tial  constituency  to  address;  and  the  more  his  views 
have  been  challenged,  the  more  widely  they  have 
spread.  For  two  centuries  Scotland  has  been  a  home 
C  CEuX  and  battlefield  of  theology;  and  while,  during  that 
long  period,  no  theologian  of  the  first  rank  has  appeared, 
none  of  the  calibre  of  Aquinas  or  St.  Augustine,  there 
have  never  been  lacking  men  remarkable  for  their 
spiritual  genius,  interpreters  of  the  mind  of  God, 
defenders  and  expounders  of  the  Word,  and  masters 
in  the  understanding  and  unfolding  of  the  method  of 
Divine  revelation/’2 

It  is  these  men  who  kept  alive  in  Scotch  Presbyte¬ 
rianism  something  of  the  progressive  spirit  of 
Calvin.  They  put  the  voice  of  God,  speaking  through 
reason  and  conscience,  above  ecclesiastical  authority 
and  public  opinion.  To  an  essentially  conservative 
temperament  they  wedded  a  spirit  of  progress.  That 
Scotch  Presbyterianism  today  has  a  heritage  of  re¬ 
sponsible  freedom,  and  the  creative  scholarship  that 
can  live  only  in  an  atmosphere  of  freedom,  is  a  debt 
th  at  Presbyterians  everywhere  owe  to  these  men.  In 
their  work  the  striking  remark  of  A.  B.  Davidson 

1  The  adherence  of  Scotch  Presbyterian  ministers  to  the  Confession  is  not  so  rigid, 
at  least  at  the  present  time,  as  Mr.  Henderson’s  words  indicate.  Dr.  John  Kelman, 
pastor  o?  the  Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church,  New  York,  formerly  of  the  United 
free  Church  ol  Scotland,  writes:  “The  state  of  matters  in  regard  to  the  United 
Free  Church  of  Scotland  is  that  that  Church  retains  the  Confession  of  Faith  as 
one  of  her  principal  standards,  but  that  she  qualifies  her  adherence  to  it  by  a  declar¬ 
atory  act  explaining  that  this  adherence  refers  only  to  the  matters  of  main  import 
in  the  Confession  and  not  to  all  the  details.  If  in  any  specific  case  the  question 
should  arise  whether  the  matter  is  of  the  substance  or  a  mere  detail,  it  is  to  be 
settled  by  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Church.” 

The  Religious  Controversies  oj  Scotland ,  p.  2. 


/ 


8o  EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


finds  illustration:  “A  nation  never  reaches  a  truth;  a 
man  does,  and  it  becomes  a  national  inheritance.” 

2.  Another  fact  to  be  noted  is  that  the  Presbyterian 
Churches  of  Scotland  man  their  theological  schools 
with  their  most  progressive  scholars  and  thinkers.  The 
Free  Church  of  Scotland,  for  example,  was  organized 
in  1843,  and  in  proportion  to  its  age  and  membership 
it  has  more  scholars  of  distinction  in  its  theological 
schools  than  any  other  Church  in  the  world.  Without 
exception  these  men  have  been  loyal  to  the  funda¬ 
mental  principles  of  the  Christian  religion  as  inter¬ 
preted  by  Presbyterianism;  but  they  have  also  been 
loyal  to  the  increasing  light  and  truth  which  it  is  the 
privilege  of  our  age  to  possess  and  to  rejoice  in.  All 
the  theological  professors  mentioned  in  this  discussion 
• — Rainy,  Drummond,  Davidson,  Lindsay,  Robertson 
Smith,  Dods,  Bruce,  Candlish,  Whyte,  Orr,  Denney, 
and  Adam  Smith — have  shown  this  twofold  loyalty. 
The  rising  ministry,  therefore,  of  the  most  influential 
branch  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  is  trained  by  men  of 
the  highest  Christian  character  and  the  finest  creative 
scholarship.  Such  training  insures,  if  anything  can, 
both  progressiveness  and  stability  in  a  ministry. 

3.  Lastly,  these  theological  battles  of  two  centu¬ 
ries,  fought  out  before  popular  tribunals  and  discussed 
in  every  congregation  and  in  every  home,  have  ac¬ 
customed  Scotch  Presbyterians  to  conflict  of  opinions. 
It  is  only  through  such  discipline  that  Christian  men 
and  women  become  intelligent,  virile  minded,  and 
tolerant;  not  only  unafraid  of  change,  but  hospitable 
to  it  as  one  of  the  indispensable  conditions  of  health 
and  progress.  To  proclaim  views  that  disturb  the 
minds  of  Christians  is  not  an  agreeable  thing  to  do, 
but  it  is  part  of  the  price  that  has  been  paid  for  progress 
in  every  age  and  in  every  branch  of  the  Church. 
Simple  faith,  even  when  associated  with  beautiful 
Christian  living,  is  often  unthinking  faith;  and  beyond 
a  certain  point,  consideration  for  it  may  become  be- 


EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  8 1 


trayal  of  the  truth,  and  therefore  of  the  deeper  interests 
of  faith  itself.  Much  of  this  fear  of  theological  change 
would  pass  away,  if  it  were  clearly  understood  that 
essential  Christianity  is  not  theology,  but  is  the  spirit 
of  Christ  as  leaven  in  the  human  heart — a  possession 
that  lies  beyond  the  reach  of  any  theological  change 
whatsoever. 

What  American  Presbyterianism  needs  today  is 
greater  freedom  and  courage  in  the  pursuit  of  truth. 
The  theory  of  evolution,  the  modern  study  of  the  Bible, 
the  need  of  a  truer  view  of  inspiration,  and  the  necessity 
for  the  modernization  of  some  parts  of  our  theology, 
have  put  upon  the  Church  a  responsibility  that  can 
be  discharged  only  by  patient  thought  and  candid 
speech.  “As  things  change  around  us,”  wrote  Dr. 
Rainy,  “immobility  may  become  at  once  the  most 
insidious  and  the  most  pernicious  form  of  inconsis¬ 
tency.  The  questions  that  arise  must  be  dealt  with. 
If  they  bring  trials  they  bring  benefits  far  more  weighty. 
They  force  the  Church  from  the  mere  traditionary 
impression  of  her  principles  and  practice  to  sink  afresh 
into  the  meaning  of  both  and  to  apply  that  meaning 
under  new  conditions  and  amid  new  perplexities .  .  .The 
Church  of  Christ  has  no  liberty  to  become  the  slave 
even  of  its  own  history.” 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  83 


APPENDIX  A. 

The  following  extracts  are  from  addresses  by  Mr. 
Voliva  which  were  printed  in  the  Theocrat  (Feb.  4,  11, 
18,  and  May  20,  1922)  and  in  Leaves  of  Healing  (March 
4,  April  1,  June  10,  July  8,  15,  1922).  These  are  the 
official  publications  of  the  Christian  Catholic  Apos¬ 
tolic  Church  in  Zion.  Mr.  Voliva’s  views  are  not  here 
given  to  amuse,  but  to  show  that  he  is  consistent 
where  others  are  not.  Accepting  the  theory  of  verbal 
inspiration  he  endeavors  to  carry  its  implications  to 
their  logical  conclusion,  both  in  belief  and  in  practice. 
He  is  consistent  in  putting  modern  astronomy,  evolu¬ 
tion,  modern  medicine,  and  the  higher  criticism  in  the 
same  class:  for  evolution  and  modern  astronomy  are 
equally  at  variance  with  the  theory  of  an  inerrant 
Bible;  medical  practice  is  superfluous  if  James  5:14-15 
is  to  be  taken  at  its  face  value;  while  the  modern 
critical  study  of  the  Bible  has  shown  from  abundant 
material  the  impossibility  of  reconciling  the  theory  of 
inerrancy  with  the  facts.  We  may  assume  that  if 
Mr.  Voliva  doesn’t  put  to  death  witches  (Exodus  22: 
18),  and  those  who  strike  or  curse  their  parents  (Exo¬ 
dus  21:15,  i7)j  and  those  who  work  on  the  Sabbath 
(Exodus  31:15),  it  is  only  because  Uncle  Sam  or  the 
State  of  Illinois  might  raise  serious  objection. 

“The  Bible  was  written  by  the  finger  of  God.  It  was  dictated 
by  God  to  holy  men  who  wrote  as  the  Spirit  inspired  them  and 
‘gave  them  utterance.’  God  is  the  Author  of  it.  I  am  now  fifty- 
two  years  old.  I  entered  the  ministry  when  I  was  sixteen  years 
of  age,  and  I  always  have  stood  firmly  by  the  verbal  inspiration 
of  the  Bible.” 

“I  am  not  preaching  today  one  thing  that  I  did  not  believe 
when  I  was  a  little  boy  ten  years  old — not  one.  I  stand  where  I 
stood  when  I  sat  in  the  ‘love  feast’  in  the  little  old  Methodist 
Church.  I  am  a  regular  old  moss-back,  an  old-time  follower  of 
Jesus  Christ,  and  I  praise  God  today  that  none  of  these  newfangled, 
demon-inspired  systems  have  ever  touched  me.  I  pray  that  God 


84  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


will  forbid  that  they  ever  shall  touch  me!  I  stick  to  the  Good 
Old  Book,  and  I  read  it  with  greater  joy  today  than  ever  before.” 

‘‘It  used  to  be  Robert  G.  Ingersoll  delivering  lectures  at  a  dollar 
per,  Thomas  Paine,  Blatchford  of  England,  and  others,  who  made 
small  fortunes  out  of  attacking  the  Bible.  But  they  are  all  dead. 
Today,  thousands  of  ministers  in  the  churches  and  professors  in 
the  colleges,  universities,  and  seminaries,  who,  under  the  garb  of 
Christ,  teach  higher  criticism,  are  doing  the  work  far  more  effect¬ 
ively.” 

“We  asserted  that  the  Christian  Catholic  Apostolic  Church  in 
Zion  accepts  the  Bible  as  the  Inspired  Word  of  God,  that  we  be¬ 
lieve  that  the  Bible  in  the  original  languages  was  verbally  inspired 
— not  only  the  thoughts,  but  also  the  words.  We  stated,  further, 
that  we  believe  all  that  the  Bible  has  to  say  regarding  the  earth, 
the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the  stars,  and  that  we  do  not  propose  to 
surrender  one  iota  of  ground  to  infidel  astronomers.  Modern 
Astronomy,  Evolution,  and  Higher  Criticism  are  a  trinity  of  evils; 
in  other  words,  they  are  triplets,  and  the  Devil  is  their  father. 
The  Devil’s  intention  in  originating  and  foisting  these  false  sys¬ 
tems — Modern  Astronomy,  Evolution,  and  Higher  Criticism — 
upon  the  world  was  to  bring  about  the  rejection  of  the  Bible  as 
the  Inspired  Word  of  God,  to  destroy  the  faith  of  the  people  in  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  to  ridicule  and  make  absurd  the  whole 
scheme  of  redemption.” 

“The  laughable  thing  to  a  thinking  man  is  that  the  mere  hypoth¬ 
eses  of  Copernicus  are  presented  now  in  all  the  schools  as  facts!” 

“Who  that  has  given  this  subject  any  real,  serious  consideration 
can  believe  that  the  earth  is  a  whirling  globe?  To  accept  this 
theory  and  believe  in  it  is  to  reject  the  Bible  as  the  Inspired  Word 
of  God,  and  to  do  violence  to  all  of  our  God-given  senses;  and  we 
assert  here  that  not  a  single  fact  in  nature  can  be  found  to  support 
this  theory.” 

“I  do  not  believe  that  this  earth  is  a  whirling  globe  rotating  on 
its  axis,  revolving  in  its  orbit,  and  shooting  off  in  the  direction  of 
Hercules;  in  other  words,  moving  in  three  different  directions  at 
the  same  time.  I  have  lived  in  Australia,  and  I  did  not  walk 
with  my  head  hanging  down:  I  walked  with  my  head  up,  just  as 
I  do  here — which  would  be  impossible  if  the  earth  were  a  whirling 
globe.  I  will  pay  not  only  one  thousand  dollars  for  a  single  proof 
of  the  sphericity  of  the  earth,  or  that  it  has  any  axial,  orbital  or 
other  motions  whatever,  but  I  will  pay  five  thousand  dollars.” 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  8 5 


“The  Bible  is  the  Inspired  Word  of  God.  The  Bible  plainly 
teaches  that  the  earth  is  an  outstretched,  stationary  plane — in 
other  words,  that  it  has  no  motions.” 

“Let  it  be  kept  constantly  in  mind  that  our  position  is  that 
you  cannot  believe  the  Bible  and  Modern  Astronomy  at  the  same 
time.  You  must  accept  one  and  reject  the  other,  for  you  cannot 
accept  both.  All  persons  who  profess  to  be  Christians,  to  believe 
in  the  Inspired  Word  of  God,  to  be  followers  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  should  be  compelled  to  come  out  in  the  open  and  reject 
the  infidel  theories  of  Modern  Astronomv,  and  to  take  their  stand 
uncompromisingly  for  the  Word  of  God.  When  we  were  children, 
we  were  taught  (and  all  the  children  in  the  schools  today  are  being 
taught  the  same  thing)  that  the  earth  is  round  like  an  orange, 
that  it  is  a  whirling  globe  of  land  and  water,  that  it  is  only  a  tiny 
speck  in  the  universe,  that  it  is  only  one  of  many  worlds.  Are 
these  theories  of  Modern  Astronomy  supported  by  any  facts?  We 
say  emphatically  that  they  are  not!  That  they  are  a  contradic¬ 
tion  of  the  plain  Word  of  God,  and  that  their  advocacy  has  done 
incalculable  harm!” 

“According  to  the  Inspired  Word  of  God,  the  moon  has  a  light 
of  its  own,  and  the  assertion  of  modern  astronomers  that  the  moon 
shines  with  light  reflected  from  the  sun  is  without  any  support 
whatever.” 

“The  teaching  of  this  portion  of  God’s  Inspired  Word  [Psalm 
19:4,  5,  6,  Revised  Version]  is  that  the  sun  moves  over  and  around 
the  earth,  which  is  fixed  and  has  no  motions  whatever.” 

“God’s  Word  teaches  that  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the  stars 
were  made  for  the  earth,  and  that  in  comparison  with  the  earth 
they  are  very  small,  and  they  are  not  very  far  away.  In  fact, 
they  circle  in  the  firmament,  or  dome,  of  Heaven.” 

“The  animal  kingdom  is  under  the  curse,  and  there  are  ferocious 
and  poisonous  animals,  as  a  result  of  sin.” 

“As  God  said:  ‘Thorns  and  thistles  shall  it  bring  forth  to  thee; 
and  thou  shalt  eat  the  herbs  of  the  field.’  One  does  not  need  any 
greater  proof  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible  than  this  statement. 
They  can  bring  to  bear  upon  it  all  their  worldly  wisdom,  but 
they  cannot  gainsay  it.  The  curse  rests  upon  man,  upon  the 
animal  and  the  vegetable  kingdom, — upon  everything,  it  makes 
no  difference  what  I  might  mention;  whether  it  is  an  apple 


86  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


tree  or  a  pear  tree  or  a  gooseberry  bush.  Thorns  and  thistles 
and  numerous  other  things  curse  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  in 
order  to  raise  a  crop  it  is  a  constant  battle  against  ragweeds,  jim- 
son  weeds,  Spanish  needles,  cockleburs,  chinchbugs,  and  various 
other  things.” 

“I  read  in  my  Bible,  ‘I  am  the  Lord  who  healeth  thee’  (Exodus 
15:26).  I  read  in  my  Bible,  ‘Is  any  sick  among  you?  Let  him 
call  for  the  elders  of  the  Church;  and  let  them  pray  over  him, 
anointing  him  with  oil  in  she  name  of  the  Lord;  and  the  prayer  of 
faith  shall  save  the  sick’  (James  5:14,  15). 

“I  will  give  five  hundred  dollars  to  any  one  who  can  find  a  line 
between  the  lids  of  the  Bible  in  support  of  doctors  and  drugs, 
surgeons  and  knives!  The  whole  medical  business  is  of  the  Devil! 
God  has  nothing  to  do  with  it!” 

“Devil  possession  is  a  stern  reality!” 

No  doubt  many  will  feel  that  some  of  Mr.  Voliva’s 
views  are  unique  in  their  irrationality.  Such  is  not 
really  the  case.  Nothing  would  be  easier  than  to  point 
out  religious  views  or  doctrines,  based  upon  a  literal 
interpretation  of  Scripture  and  held  by  millions  of 
Christian  people,  for  which  there  is  not  only  not  an 
atom  of  rational  evidence,  but  against  which  the  evi¬ 
dence  is  just  as  palpable  and  convincing  as  that  against 
the  antiquated  astronomy  believed  in  by  Mr.  Voliva. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  87 


APPENDIX  B. 


There  are  perhaps  some  who  do  not  understand  just 
what  Dr.  Rainy  means  by  difficulties  about  the  Canon. 
The  word  canon  means  a  measuring  rod  or  rule ,  and  it 
came  to  be  applied  to  the  Bible  as  the  rule  of  faith 
and  practice.  The  adjective  canonical ,  as  used  eccle¬ 
siastically  of  a  particular  book,  means  that  the  book 
is  regarded  as  inspired  and  authoritative,  and  there¬ 
fore  entitled  to  a  place  in  the  sacred  Scriptures. 

Different  Churches  have  different  Canons  of  Script¬ 
ure.  The  Old  Testament  ol  the  Catholic  Church  has 
seven  more  books  than  that  of  the  Protestant  Church, 
besides  additions  to  Esther  and  Daniel.  Protestants 
regard  these  extra  books  as  uncanonical  and  speak  of 
them  as  the  Apocrypha.  The  Syrian  Church  omits 
from  its  Bible  Second  and  Third  John,  Second  Peter, 
Jude,  and  Revelation.  The  Coptic  Church  omits 
Revelation.  The  Bible  of  the  Greek  Church  contains 
most  of  the  Apocrypha  of  the  Catholic  Bible. 

As  well  as  I  can  remember,  I  had  as  a  boy  some  such 
idea  concerning  the  origin  and  growth  of  the  Bible  as 
this:  God  dictated  the  Pentateuch  to  Moses,  or  else 
handed  it  to  him  already  written — in  English.  Moses 
put  it  in  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant.  The  other  books 
were  produced  in  the  same  wav  and  added  to  the 
Pentateuch  in  chronological  order.  By  some  general 
supernatural  illumination  everybody  recognized  each 
book  as  divine  as  soon  as  it  appeared,  and  of  course 
the  Bible  was  so  regarded  and  received  when  complete. 
If  the  Bible  had  actually  come  to  us  by  such  a  mechan¬ 
ical  process — by  such  straight  and  clear  “mathematical 
lines” — there  never  would  have  been  any  difficulties 
about  its  origin  and  history. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  difficulties  connected  with  the 
origin  and  growth  ol  the  Canon  extend  far  back  into 


88  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


Old  Testament  times.  For  example,  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  is  composed  of  three  collections  of  books  known 
as  the  Law ,  the  Prophets ,  and  the  Writings.  The  Law 
was  the  Pentateuch — the  first  five  books  of  the  Bible. 
The  Prophets  included  historical  books — Joshua, 
Judges,  Samuel,  and  Kings — as  well  as  Isaiah,  Jere¬ 
miah,  Ezekiel,  and  the  Twelve  Minor  Prophets.  The 
Writings  comprised  all  the  rest  of  the  Old  Testament 
books.  These  three  divisions  are  still  preserved  in 
the  Hebrew  Bible,  where  also  the  order  of  books  is 
very  different  from  that  in  our  Old  Testament. 

There  are  difficulties  connected  with  the  authorship, 
date,  and  canonization  of  the  parts  of  each  of  these 
three  collections,  and  with  the  assembling  of  the  three 
into  one  Book.  The  Law  was  the  first  collection  to 
be  looked  upon  as  authoritative,  to  which  later  were 
added  the  Prophets ,  and  to  these  two,  later  still,  the 
Writings.  It  was  a  long  and  gradual  process,  and 
debate  and  uncertainty  concerning  the  canonicity  of 
some  of  the  books — especially  Esther,  the  Song  of  Sol¬ 
omon,  and  Ecclesiastes — lasted  into  the  first  Christian 
century.  The  Canon  of  the  Old  Testament  was  not 

j 

closed  by  the  Jews  until  about  A.  D.  90. 

There  were  also  difficulties  connected  with  the 

growth  of  the  New  Testament  Canon.  Many  books 
were  written  besides  those  in  our  New  Testament,  and 
the  question  was,  which  wrere  to  be  looked  upon  as 
authoritative  for  faith  and  practice.  During  the  first 
three  or  four  centuries  books  were  read  in  the  Churches, 
and  quoted  as  Scripture,  which  are  not  in  our  New 
Testament;  and  some  that  are  in  our  New  Testament 
— especially  Hebrews,  James,  Jude,  Second  Peter,  Sec¬ 
ond  and  Third  John,  and  Revelation — were  here  and 
there  spoken  against.  Different  collections  of  books 
were  in  circulation,  and  it  was  not  until  A.  D.  397  that 
a  local  Catholic  council,  meeting  in  Carthage,  Africa, 
adopted  as  authoritative  a  collection  identical  with  our 
present  New  Testament.  This  was  only  a  provincial 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  89 


council,  and  the  Catholic  Church  as  a  whole  did  not 
officially  declare  its  present  Bible  to  be  the  canonical 
Scriptures  until  the  Council  ol  Trent,  A.  D.  1  <46. 

Protestants,  who  came  out  Irom  the  Catholic  Church 
during  the  16th  century,  differed  as  to  the  canonicity 
of  certain  books.  As  a  rule  they  rejected  the  Apocry¬ 
pha,  although  these  books  used  to  be  printed,  more 
commonly  than  now,  in  Protestant  Bibles  as  an  appen¬ 
dix  to  the  Old  Testament.  Martin  Luther  spoke  of 
James  as  an  epistle  of  straw,  and  thought  little  of 
Hebrews,  Jude,  and  Revelation.  Calvin  had  his  doubts 
about  a  tew  New  Testament  books,  but  was  not  willing 
to  exclude  any. 

It  is  easy,  therefore,  to  see  what  Dr.  Rainy  meant 
when  he  spoke  of  difficulties  about  the  Canon.  Yet 
in  spite  ot  all  these  difficulties  what  Dr.  Rainy  says, 
or  implies,  is  true:  namely,  that  we  have  the  Bible, 
and  any  honest  man  can  fin'd  all  the  moral  and  religious 
truth  he  needs  to  live  by,  whether  he  seeks  it  in  the 
Protestant  Bible,  the  Catholic  Bible,  the  Syrian  Bible 
the  New  Testament  alone,  or  only  in  certain  favorite 
books,  or  even  passages. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  91 


APPENDIX  C. 

In  Dr.  F.  R.  Tennant’s  book,  The  Sources  of  the 
Doctrines  of  the  Fall  and  Original  Sin ,  p.  78,  is  the 
following:  “Prof.  Orr  gives  references  which  are  rele¬ 
vant  in  his  Christian  View  of  God  and  the  Worlds  but 
the  natural  science  of  this  work  must  be  received  in 
some  cases  with  great  caution,  inasmuch  as  it  onesidedly 
represents  the  opinion  of  the  minority  in  the  scientific 
world.”1 

In  order  to  test  Dr.  Orr’s  trustworthiness  in  matters 
of  science,  I  submitted  three  of  his  statements  to  two 
of  the  most  competent  paleontologists  in  the  United 
States:  Professor  Henry  Fairfield  Osborn,  President 
of  the  American  Museum  of  Natural  History,  and 
Professor  William  Berryman  Scott,  Professor  of  Geol¬ 
ogy  and  Paleontology,  Princeton  University.  The 
statements  submitted  were: 

“Evolution,  as  I  said  earlier,  is  not  Darwinism,  and  the  Dar¬ 
winian  idea  of  the  production  of  man  by  slow  gradations  from 
lower  ape-like  forms  is  one  which  I  think  is  being  discredited  on 
scientific  grounds.” 

“There  was  the  famous  Java  case — the  best  yet  produced — but 
scientific  men  of  the  highest  rank  early  pronounced  its  claims 
unfounded.” 

“We  read  in  books  of  500,000  years  or  200,000  years  as  the 
period  of  man’s  abode  on  earth.  There  is  no  need  for  Christian 
people  taking  alarm  at  these  exaggerated  estimates.  Science 
itself  is  rapidly  retrenching  them.”2 

Following  are  the  letters  of  Dr.  Osborn  and  Dr. 
Scott  commenting  on  these  statements. 


1  Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  Macmillan  Co. 

2  Sidelights  on  Christian  Doctrine  (1909),  pp.  87,  88. 


92  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


New  York,  N.  Y., 

May  the  first, 

Nineteen  hundred  twenty-two. 

My  dear  Mr.  Smith: 

Thanking  you  for  your  letter  of  April  27,  I  will 
answer  your  questions  as  best  I  can: 

Existing  evidence  regarding  the  ancestry  of  man 
from  lower  forms  of  primates  is  absolutely  irresistible. 
In  the  Hall  of  the  Age  of  Man  of  the  American  Museum 
all  this  evidence  is  brought  together. 

Renewed  investigation  of  the  Trinil  Pithecanthropus 
shows  that  the  anterior  part  of  the  brain  is  of  much 
higher  type  and  a  more  pro-human  type  than  was 
originally  supposed. 

Geologic  evidence  as  to  the  antiquity  of  man  has 
recently  been  reinforced  by  the  discovery  of  Tertiary 
man  preceding  Quaternary  time,  which  is  estimated  by 
conservative  geologists,  like  Secretary  Walcott  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution,  to  be  400,000  years. 

Believe  me, 

Sincerely  yours, 

(Signed)  Henry  Fairfield  Osborn, 

President. 

Mr.  Hay  Watson  Smith. 


Princeton,  N.  J.,  May  3,  1922. 

The  Reverend  Hay  Watson  Smith, 

Little  Rock,  Arkansas. 

Dear  Mr.  Smith: 

I  have  your  letter  of  April  27th,  and  am  glad  to 
answer  your  questions  to  the  best  of  my  ability.  You 
are  at  liberty  to  use  my  name  in  connection  with 
these  answers  if  vou  so  desire. 

J 


55 


EVOL  UEION  and  PRESB YPERIANISM  93 


Your  first  quotation  from  Dr.  Orr’s  book  is — 

“Evolution,  as  I  said  earlier,  is  not  Darwinism,  and  the  Dar¬ 
winian  idea  of  the  production  of  man  by  slow  gradations  from 
lower  ape-like  forms  is  one  which  I  think  is  being  discredited  on 
scientific  grounds.” 

It  is  quite  true  that  evolution  is  not  Darwinism. 
The  latter  term  should  be  restricted  to  the  theory  of 
natural  selection,  which  is  Darwin’s  explanation  of  the 
evolutionary  process.  But  that  Darwin’s  idea  of 
man’s  origin  from  ape-like  forms  is  now  being  dis¬ 
credited  on  scientific  grounds  is  not  true.  On  the 
contrary,  the  discoveries  which  have  been  made  in 
recent  years  in  England,  on  the  continent  of  Europe, 
in  Asia,  and  in  Africa  are  strongly  confirmatory  of 
Darwin’s  belief.  It  is  true  that  we  have  no  such 
complete  pedigree  for  man  as  we  have  for  many  ani¬ 
mals,  such  as  horses,  camels,  rhinoceroses,  etc.;  but 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  is  merely  a  question  of 
time  when  this  pedigree  shall  be  completely  filled  up. 

Secondly: 

J 

“There  was  the  famous  Java  case — the  best  yet  produced — but 
scientific  men  of  the  highest  rank  early  pronounced  its  claims 
unfounded.” 

You  ask  whether  they  do  so  now,  and  to  this  I 
think  the  answer  should  be — No;  although  some  very 
cautious  writers,  like  Dr.  A.  Smith  Woodward  of  the 
British  Museum,  express  themselves  in  a  very  doubtful 
manner  about  the  significance  of  Dubois’  discovery. 
The  material  is  unfortunately  very  incomplete,  and 
therefore  care  in  founding  any  important  inferences 
upon  it  is  obviously  called  for.  On  the  other  hand, 
new  examinations  of  the  Pithecanthropus  skull  go  to 
confirm  its  importance  as  a  probable  human  ancestor. 

Thirdly: 

“We  read  in  books  of  500,000  years  or  200,000  years  as  the 
period  of  man’s  abode  upon  earth.  There  is  no  need  for  Christian 
people  taking  alarm  at  these  exaggerated  estimates.  Science 
itself  is  rapidly  retrenching  them.” 


94  E  VOL  UTION  and  ERE  SB  Y  T E  RIAN  I SM 


I  do  not  think  this  statement  can  be  maintained, 
though  estimates  in  years  of  geological  time  are  seldom 
of  much  value.  We  can  only  say  that  the  time  in¬ 
volved  is  of  that  order  of  magnitude,  and  that  man 
has  been  upon  earth  many  tens,  if  not  hundreds,  of 
thousands  of  years.  The  work  of  Baron  DeGeer  in 
Sweden  is  giving  us  a  real  chronology  of  the  time  which 
has  elapsed  since  the  final  disappearance  of  the  great 
Scandinavian  glacier,  and  when  his  work  is  completed 
it  will  be  possible  to  speak  with  some  precision  of  the 
age  of  mankind.  So  far  from  retrenching  the  figures, 
it  is  now  probable  that  DeGeer  will  increase  them. 

Hoping  that  this  will  answer  your  purpose,  I  am, 

Very  sincerely  yours, 

(Signed)  W.  B.  Scott. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  95 


APPENDIX  D. 

‘‘Till  the  days  of  Robertson  Smith.”  Rev.  William 
Robertson  Smith,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  (1846-1894),  was  one  of 
the  most  versatile  and  gifted  scholars  and  teachers  that 
the  Presbyterian  Church  has  produced.  The  late  Vis¬ 
count  Bryce,  in  an  appreciative  sketch,  speaks  of  him 
as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  of  his  time  and 
says  that  had  he  lived  in  the  prime  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  the  fame  of  his  learning  would  have  filled 
half  Europe.1 

In  1870,  at  the  age  of  24,  Smith  was  chosen  to  fill 
the  chair  of  Hebrew  and  Old  Testament  Exegesis  in 
the  Free  Church  College  at  Aberdeen — a  position  he 
held  until  1881.  On  account  of  his  eminence  as  a 
scholar,  he  was  asked  to  prepare  a  number  of  articles 
on  Biblical  subjects  for  the  9th  edition  of  the  Encyclo¬ 
pedia  Britannica ,  the  edition  of  which  he  afterwards 
became  editor-in-chief.  Some  of  these,  especially  the 
article  1  ‘Bible,”  excited  great  alarm  throughout  the 
Free  Church.  This  was  to  be  expected,  since  the  views 
advocated  by  Professor  Smith  concerning  the  author¬ 
ship,  date,  and  structure  of  certain  books  of  the  Bible 
were  new  to  the  people  of  Scotland,  and  were  subversive 
of  traditions  that  had  been  part  of  the  faith  of  centuries. 
To  give  up  views  long  held,  without  convincing  evidence 
that  they  are  erroneous,  indicates  weakness;  and  with 
the  evidence  in  this  case,  the  Presbyterians  of  Scotland 
as  a  whole  were  entirely  unacquainted. 

In  1876  agitation  against  Professor  Smith  began, 
and  later  he  asked  for  a  formal  trial.  The  request 
was  granted  and  in  1878,  before  the  Presbytery  of 
Aberdeen,  began  the  most  famous  heresy  trial  of 
modern  times.  The  principal  charges  against  Profes¬ 
sor  Smith  were:  “(1)  Denying  that  the  Aaronic 


1 Studies  in  Contemporary  Biography . 


96  EVOL  UEION  and  PRESB  YEERIANISM 


priesthood  was  instituted  in  the  wilderness.  (2)  Al¬ 
leging  that  the  legislative  parts  of  Deuteronomy  were 
a  prophetic  recasting  of  the  Mosaic  law  not  older  than 
the  seventh  century  [700-600]  B.  C.  (3)  Denying 
the  verbal  infallibility  of  the  books  of  Chronicles.”1 

It  is  important  to  understand  the  exact  point  at 
issue  in  this  trial — the  only  point  or  question  that  the 
ecclesiastical  courts  were  to  decide.  It  was  not 
whether  Professor  Smith  held  the  views  with  which 
he  was  charged — he  did  hold  them.  It  was  not 
whether  those  views  were  true  or  false — that  could  be 
determined  only  by  competent  scholars  after  patient 
research,  not  by  ecclesiastical  authority.  The  question 
to  be  decided  was,  whether  the  views  held  by  Professor 
Smith  were  compatible  with  the  teachings  of  the 
Westminster  Confession  of  Faith  and  Catechisms. 
Presbytery  decided  that  they  were,  and  Professor 
Smith  was  jmquitted.  Appeal  was  then  taken  to  the 
Synod  of  Aberdeen  and  finally  to  the  General  Assem¬ 
bly,  with  acquittal  by  both  courts. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  in  the  vote  of  any  of  the 
three  courts,  that  all  of  those  favoring  acquittal  ap¬ 
proved  of  Professor  Smith’s  views.  Many  of  them 
did  not.  Almost  certainly  a  majority  of  the  members 
of  the  Free  Church  did  not.  /\cquittal  meant  only 
that  the  views  held  by  Professor  Smith  were  not  at 
variance  with  the  standards  of  the  Free  Church. 

But  the  agitation  continued,  and  in  1881  the  Assem¬ 
bly,  without  a  trial,  removed  Professor  Smith  from  his 
chair  in  the  Free  Church  College  at  Aberdeen,  without 
deposing  him  from  the  ministry  of  the  Church.  The 
ground  on  which  this  action  was  taken  was  that  the 
views  of  Professor  Smith  were  “of  an  unsettling  ten¬ 
dency.”  Of  this  action  Bryce  says:  “Although  the 

1  The  Religious  Controversies  of  Scotland ,  p.  210.  The  word  prophetic  as  used 
in  item  (2)  does  not,  of  course,  mean  predictive.  It  means  written  under  the 
influence  or  in  the  spirit  of  the  prophets — Amos,  Hosea,  Isaiah,  and  Micah — who 
wrote  or  preached  in  the  previous  century,  800-700  B.  C. 


EVOL  UTION  and  PRESB  Y  T E  RIAN  I SM  97 


party  of  repression  triumphed  so  far  as  to  deprive  him 
of  his  chair,  the  victory  virtually  remained  with  him, 
not  only  because  he  had  shown  that  the  Scottish 
Presbyterian  standards  did  not  condemn  the  views  he 
held,  but  also  because  his  defence  and  the  discussions 
which  it  occasioned  had,  in  bringing  those  views  to 
the  knowledge  of  a  great  number  of  thoughtful  laymen, 
led  such  persons  to  reconsider  their  own  position. 
Some  of  them  found  themselves  forced  to  agree  with 
Smith.  Others,  who  distrusted  their  capacity  for 
arriving  at  a  conclusion,  came  at  least  to  think  that 
the  questions  involved  did  not  affect  the  essentials  of 
faith,  and  must  be  settled  by  the  ordinary  canons  of  his¬ 
torical  and  philological  criticism.  Thus  the  trial  prov¬ 
ed  to  be  a  turning-point  for  the  Scottish  Churches. ”1 

Although  there  were  strong  men  on  both  sides  of 
this  controversy,  yet  the  leading  ministers  in  the  Free 
Church — such  as  Dr.  Robert  Rainy,  Dr.  Alexander 
Whyte,  Dr.  A.  B.  Davidson,  Dr.  T.  M.  Lindsay,  and 
Dr.  J.  S.  Candlish — voted  for  Professor  Smith’s  ac¬ 
quittal.  But  it  was  one  of  these  men,  Dr.  Rainy,  who 
in  1881  led  the  movement  which  resulted  in  the  removal 
of  Professor  Smith  from  his  chair;  not  on  the  ground 
that  his  views  had  been  proved  untrue  or  at  variance 
with  the  standards  of  the  Church,  but  on  grounds  of 
expediency. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  discuss  here  the  wisdom  or 
the  justice  of  Dr.  Rainy’s  course — the  most  disputed 
act  of  his  life;  but  it  ought  in  fairness  to  be  said  that 
Dr.  Rainy  was  a  strong  advocate  of  the  right  of  critical 
inquiry  into  the  authorship,  date,  and  literary  structure 
of  the  books  of  the  Bible.  His  biographer  says:  “He 
laid  it  down  emphatically  that  they  could  not  have 
[in  the  Smith  case]  a  heresy  libel;  ‘to  the  very  last  he 
would  refuse  the  idea  of  making  such  questions  rank 

1  Studies  in  Contemporary  Biography ,  pp.  311,  312.  Reprinted  by  permission 
of  the  Macmillan  Co. 


9s  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


as  confessionally  settled.’  He  did  not  regard  the 
Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  as  a  matter  of 
faith  and  he  did  not  believe — this  was  in  reply  to  Dr. 
Moody  Stuart,  who  claimed  our  Lord’s  imprimatur  to 
that  view — that  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Apostles  ‘ever 
said  anything  on  that  subject.’  He  deprecated  the 
impression  that  ‘a  great  crisis  had  arisen’  and  viewed 
the  matter  as  ‘providential,’  one  benefit  of  which  would 
be  ‘to  improve  the  education  of  their  minds  and  the 
minds  of  their  people  in  reference  to  this  whole  class 
of  subjects.’  ”  And  to  a  friend  he  wrote:  “I  am  still 
more  anxious  to  avoid  unreasonable  restrictions  on 
liberty  of  inquiry  and  discussion.  We  are  much  in 
danger  of  it.”1 

While  Professor  Smith  rejected  the  theory  of  verbal 
inerrancy  and  held  views  concerning  the  origin  and 
date  of  the  Pentateuch  that  were  at  that  time  regarded 
as  radical,  he  was  yet  thoroughly  evangelical  in  his 
theology  and  a  firm  believer  in  the  inspiration  of  the 
Bible.  During  his  trial  he  said:  ‘If  I  am  asked  why 
I  receive  Scripture  as  the  Word  of  God  and  as  the 
only  perfect  rule  of  faith  and  life,  I  answer  with  all 
the  Fathers  of  the  Protestant  Church,  because  the 
Bible  is  the  only  record  of  the  redeeming  love  of  God, 
because  in  the  Bible  alone  I  find  God  drawing  near  to 
man  in  Christ  Jesus  and  declaring  to  us  in  Him  His 
will  for  our  salvation.’  ”2 

Professor  Smith  was  soon  elected  to  the  chair  of 
Arabic  in  the  University  of  Cambridge,  England,  and 
the  personal  services  of  the  most  brilliant  scholar,  the 
most  gifted  teacher,  and  one  of  the  most  devoted  sons 
of  the  Free  Church,  were  lost  to  Presbyterianism. 

“Of  an  unsettling  tendency.”  It  is  worth  while 
thinking  about  the  phrase.  Unsettling  to  what  and 
to  whom?  If  the  most  reactionary  of  conservatives 


1  Life  of  Principal  Rainy ,  vol.  I.,  pp.  316,  329. 

2 Religious  Controversies  of  Scotland ,  p.  217. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  99 


will  trace  his  ecclesiastical  lineage  back  far  enough,  he 
will  come  to  a  man,  or  to  men,  to  whose  views  the 
phrase  was  applied  by  contemporaries,  and  rightly. 
Certainly  Paul  and  Hus  and  Luther  and  Calvin  and 
Knox  and  Roger  Williams  and  Wesley  would  be  the 
last  to  claim  exemption.  If  these  men  had  not  un¬ 
settled  something  or  somebody,  they  would  long  ago 
have  been  forgotton. 

A  generation  has  passed  since  Professor  Smith  was 
deposed  from  his  chair,  and  there  is  perhaps  not  a 
Presbyterian  theological  school  in  Scotland  today, 
unless  it  be  among  the  isolated  “Wee  Frees,”  in  which 
his  views,  in  all  essential  points,  are  not  taught,  i  The 
Free  Church  of  Scotland  “has  served  herself  heir  to 
his  prophetic  mantle,  and  since  his  ejection  has  devel¬ 
oped  a  strong  liking  for  critical  studies  that  may  well 
be  construed  as  an  act  of  repentance  and  reparation. 
Robertson  Smith  has  lit  a  candle  in  the  Church  that 
will  not  soon  be  put  out.  There  are  few,  whether  they 
are  aware  of  it  or  not,  whose  knowledge  of  religious 
truth  has  not  been  broadened  and  enriched  by  the 
critical  movements  associated  with  his  name/’1 


1  The  Religious  Controversies  of  Scotland ,  p.  222. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  ioi 


APPENDIX  E. 


Dear  Sir: 


Aberdeen, 

May  io,  1922 


Your  letter  of  April  27  has  reached  me  this  morning 
just  as  I  am  leaving  home  for  ten  days.  You  must 
therefore  be  content  with  a  hurried  answer. 


I  have  not  written  upon  evolution  and  have  no 
right  to  give  an  authoritative  opinion  on  it.  But  in 
common  with  other  persons  of  intelligence  I  accept 
the  theory.  I  have  nowhere  given  “explicit  expression” 
to  my  viewrs.  But  as  you  have  already  gathered  from 
my  writings  I  believe  as  you  say  that  “acceptance  of 
the  theory  of  evolution  is  perfectly  consistent  with 
evangelical  Christianity.” 

You  will  find  what  I  think  of  historical  and  religious 
evolution  so  far  as  Israel  is  concerned  in  the  last 
sections  of  the  Introduction  to  my  Deuteronomy  in 
the  Cambridge  Bible  for  Schools  Series. 

Yours  truly, 

(Signed)  George  x^dam  Smith. 


EVOL  UP  I  ON  and  PRESS  Y  T ERI  AN  I SM  1 03 


APPENDIX  F. 

There  are  few  subjects,  connected  in  any  way  with 
religion,  about  which  there  is  more  misapprehension 
and  prejudice  than  about  the  higher  critics  and  their 
work. 

This  prejudice  has  been  ascribed  in  part  to  the  title 
itself  as  suggesting  egotism;  but  that  this  is  not  its 
true  source  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  there  is  no  prej¬ 
udice  against  the  higher  criticism  of  any  other  classic 
than  the  Bible.  Both  the  lower  and  the  higher  criti¬ 
cism  are  methods  of  study  that  are  applied  to  all 
literature  where  there  is  uncertainty  as  to  a  writer’s 
exact  words  or  meaning.  Especially  are  these  two 
kinds  of  study — two  aspects  rather  of  the  one  search 
after  truth — indispensable  in  the  case  of  all  ancient 
classics;  for  there  is  almost  always  uncertainty  as  to 
the  text  and  meaning  of  manuscripts  written  and 
perpetuated  in  languages  and  amid  conditions  differing 
from  those  with  which  we  are  familiar. 

This  prejudice,  then,  is  not  against  the  criticism  of 
classical  literature  in  general,  but  only  against  the 
criticism  of  the  greatest  of  all  classics,  the  Bible.  Be¬ 
fore  seeking  the  source  of  this  widespread  prejudice, 
let  us  ask  what  the  higher  critic  and  the  higher  crit¬ 
icism  are. 

As  to  the  word  higher:  Everyone  knows  what  the 
word  means  in  such  expressions  as  the  higher  mathe¬ 
matics  and  the  higher  learning.  It  implies  a  lower 
mathematics  or  learning  upon  which  the  higher  is  built. 
Such  is  its  meaning  in  the 
Bible.  It  implies  that  there  is  a  lower  or  more  basic 
study  of  the  Bible — as  there  is.  This  lower  study  of 
the  Bible  is  the  painstaking  effort  made  by  scholars 
to  discover  the  exact  words  that  were  used  by  the 
forty  or  more  men  who  wrote  the  Bible. 

It  may  not  be  known  to  all  readers  of  the  Bible  that 
we  have  not  a  single  original  or  autograph  manuscript 


higher  criticism  of  the 


io4  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


of  any  part  of  the  Scriptures.  All  the  manuscripts 
penned  by  the  men  who  wrote  the  Bible  have  been 
lost.  What  manuscripts  we  now  have  are  copies — not 
probably  in  any  case  of  the  original  manuscripts,  but 
of  other  copies;  and  much  copying  and  recopying,  as 
well  as  several  centuries,  intervened  between  the  orig¬ 
inal  manuscripts  and  those  we  now  have. 

One  can  easily  see,  therefore,  how  readily,  through 
generations  of  copying  and  recopying,  editing  and  re- 
editing,  and  translating  into  other  languages,  changes 
found  their  way  into  the  text  of  the  manuscripts. 
Most  of  these  changes  were  unintentional,  due  in  many 
cases  to  the  drowsiness  of  the  copyist — for  one  easily 
nods  over  such  monotonous  work.  Some  were  inten¬ 
tional,  made  for  various  reasons.  Occasionally  a  mar¬ 
ginal  note,  made  by  a  scribe,  was  incorporated  in  the 
text  by  a  later  scribe.  The  sum  total  of  these  textual 
variations  runs  into  the  thousands,  but  the  variations, 
although  so  numerous,  do  not  affect  any  important 
teaching  of  the  Bible. 

Now  the  work  of  the  lower,  or  textual,  criticism  is 
to  discover,  by  a  thorough  study  and  comparison  of 
all  the  manuscripts  of  the  Bible  or  parts  of  the  Bible, 
what  the  text  of  the  original  manuscripts  was.  It  is 
basic  work,  because  we  cannot  understand  accurately 
a  writer’s  meaning  until  we  know  the  exact  words  he 
used.  Upon  this  lower  work  of  discovering  the  original 
words  of  Scripture,  the  higher  work  of  discovering  the 
meaning  of  Scripture  is  based.  The  former  is  the 
lower  criticism,  the  latter  the  higher  criticism,  of  the 
Bible. 

The  words  critic  and  criticism:  These  words  come 
from  a  Greek  word  meaning  to  discuss ,  to  discriminate , 
to  judge .  In  every-day  language  critic  and  criticism 
suggest  fault-finding  of  an  objectionable  kind.  In 
the  language  of  scholars  this  meaning  has  been  almost 
lost.  It  is  true  that  criticism,  being  discriminative, 
may  rightly  find  fault  with  shoddy  work;  but  other- 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  105 


wise  it  is  sympathetic  and  appreciative.  Matthew 
Arnold  defines  criticism  as  “a  disinterested  endeavor 
to  learn  and  propagate  the  best  that  is  known  and 
thought  in  the  world.” 

Among  scholars  the  word  critic  means  one  who,  by 
long  study,  as  well  as  by  taste,  insight,  and  imagination, 
is  qualified  to  write  or  speak  with  authority  on  some 
particular  subject.  For  example,  a  Shakespearean 
critic  is  a  scholar  who  has  so  thoroughly  mastered  the 
works  of  Shakespeare  as  to  be  able  to  explain  difficulties 
of  text  and  meaning,  and  to  bring  out  Shakespeare’s 
thought  in  a  vivid  and  convincing  way.  So  we  have 
the  art  critic,  the  literary  critic,  the  musical  critic,  and 
so  forth — the  word  in  every  case  meaning  a  student 
or  scholar  who  is  able  to  discuss,  to  discriminate,  to 
judge,  with  highly  trained  intelligence ,  the  subject  matter 
of  his  chosen  held. 

Nov/  this  is  exactly  the  meaning  of  the  word  when 
used  of  the  class  of  students  who  have  made  the  Bible 
their  special  subject  of  study.  They  are  known  as 
Biblical  or  higher  critics:  higher ,  because  their  work 
is  based  on  the  labors  of  the  lower,  or  textual,  critics; 
critics ,  because  they  have  qualified  themselves  by 
years  of  hard  study  to  speak  with  intelligence  concern¬ 
ing  the  date,  authorship,  and  meaning  of  the  books 
of  the  Bible.  It  is  clear  therefore  that  there  is  no 
suggestion  of  egotism  in  either  higher  or  critic  as 
used  by  scholars. 

The  qualifications  for  competent  Biblical  criticism 
are  very  exacting.  Higher  critics  must  master  the 
languages  in  which  the  Bible  was  written — Hebrew, 
Aramaic,  and  Greek — as  well  as  certain  cognate  lan¬ 
guages.  They  must  make  a  thorough  study,  not  only 
of  the  history  of  the  people  of  Israel,  but  also  of  certain 
periods  in  the  history  of  the  various  neighboring  peoples 
whose  civilizations  in  any  way  influenced  the  writers 
of  the  Bible.  They  must  study  the  best  commenta¬ 
ries  on  the  books  of  the  Bible.  In  fact  the  require- 


IO 6  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


ments  in  the  way  of  learning  and  accurate  scholarship 
are  so  exacting,  that  Biblical  critics  rarely  specialize 
in  both  Testaments.  If  to  learning  and  scholarship 
higher  critics  are  able  to  add  insight  and  imagination, 
and  judgment,  they  have  the  qualifications  for  becom¬ 
ing  able  and  convincing  interpreters  of  Scripture. 
Such  men  are  authorities  on  the  Bible  in  the  same 
sense  in  which  men  are  authorities  in  any  other  branch 
of  knov/ledge. 

The  aim  of  the  higher  critic  is  that  of  every  honest 
student  of  the  Bible,  however  ignorant  he  may  be: 
namely,  to  discover  the  truth.  The  method  of  the  higher 
critic  is  to  gather  and  study  all  the  facts  that  can  throw 
any  light  whatever  on  the  Bible,  and  to  draw  only 
such  conclusions  as  the  facts  warrant.  It  is  here  that 
the  higher  critics,  like  all  competent  specialists,  are 
in  a  class  by  themselves;  for  while  the  most  ignorant 
man  can  find  truth  enough  in  the  Bible  for  daily  guid¬ 
ance,  there  are  hundreds  of  Biblical  problems  on  which 
he,  and  even  well  educated  men,  are  wholly  incapable 
of  giving  an  intelligent  opinion.  It  should  be  kept  in 
mind  that  the  Bible  is  a  collection  of  books  covering 
a  period  of  authorship  of  approximately  a  thousand 
years;  that,  apart  from  its  simpler  teachings,  it  is  far 
and  away  the  most  difficult  book  to  understand  that 
the  average  man  ever  reads;  and  that  to  solve  the 
many  problems  of  origin,  date,  authorship,  structure, 
meaning,  and  canonicity  that  arise,  such  learning  and 
scholarship  are  required  as  only  specialists  who  have 
given  their  lives  to  the  study  of  the  Bible  can  possibly 
possess. 

Now  if  the  aim  and  method  of  the  higher  critics  are 
those  of  all  specialists,  and  if  higher  critics  are  simply 
Bible  students  having  exceptional  qualifications  for 
understanding  the  Bible,  why  is  there  such  a  deep- 
seated  and  wide-spread  prejudice  against  them  and 
their  work?  To  this  question  at  least  three  answers 
may  be  given: 


EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  1 07 


First,  the  thorough  study  of  the  Bible  by  the  higher 
critics  has  made  untenable  many  former  views  about 
the  Bible — such  as  the  date,  authorship,  structure,  and 
significance  of  many  of  its  books.  It  has  shown  that 
some  of  the  older  views  about  the  Bible,  such  as  the 
Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  rested  on  tradi¬ 
tion,  ancient  indeed,  but  often  wholly  unsupported 
bv  historical  or  literary  evidence.1  But  these  older 
views  had  become  so  much  an  organic  part  of 
men’s  belief  in  the  Bible  as  a  revelation  from  God, 
that  to  reject  them  was  like  rejecting  the  Bible  itself. 
W  hat  made  matters  more  serious,  the  modern  view 
seemed  to  call  in  question  the  authority  of  Christ, 
since  certain  references  of  His  to  the  Old  Testament 
were  understood,  erroneously  however,  as  giving  his 
imprimatur  to  traditional  views.2 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  the  new  views 
awakened  alarm  and  opposition.  Men  hold  their  re¬ 
ligious  convictions  more  tenaciously  than  they  do  any 
others,  and  the  work  of  the  higher  critics  looked  like 
an  attack  on  the  very  source  and  foundation  of  the 
Christian  religion.  Naturally,  the  higher  critics  and 
their  views  were  denounced  with  extreme  bitterness. 
But  the  crucial  question  in  the  controversy  was,  on 
which  side  lay  the  weight  of  evidence;  and  time  has 
pretty  well  answered  that  question.  The  newer  views 
have  been  accepted  by  almost  all  Biblical  scholars  of 
repute;  they  are  found  in  the  best  commentaries  and 
Bible  dictionaries;  and  they  are  assumed  in  the  best 
histories  of  Israel,  histories  of  the  Canon  of  Scripture, 
and  Biblical  theologies.  Rarely  does  anyone  now,  who 
values  his  reputation  as  a  scholar  among  scholars,  come 
out  openly  for  the  older  views.  One  consequence  of  this 

1  “It  would  not  be  easy  now,”  says  Dr.  Orr,  “to  gain  assent  to  the  proposition 
that  the  Pentateuch,  as  it  stands,  is  the  work  of  Moses.”  ( Revelation  and  Inspira¬ 
tion,  p.  121.) 

2  “It  may  readily  be  admitted  that  when  Jesus  used  popular  language  about 
‘Moses’  or  ‘Isaiah,’  He  did  nothing  more  than  designate  certain  books,  and  need 
not  be  understood  as  giving  ex  cathedra  judgments  on  the  intricate  critical  questions 
which  the  contents  of  these  books  raise.”  ( Revelation  and  Inspiration ,  p.  153.) 


1 08  EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


is  that  the  traditional  school  is  gradually  becoming  non¬ 
productive  in  the  field  of  Biblical  scholarship.  Even  in 
the  most  conservative  theological  seminaries  many  of 
the  books  used  are  by  higher  critics.  In  certain  fields 
of  Biblical  study  there  is  nothing  else  to  use. 

Speaking  for  myself,  I  can  only  say  that  the  modern 
view  of  the  Bible  has  made  it  a  far  more  interesting 
book,  has  solved  many  otherwise  insoluble  difficulties, 
has  clothed  the  Old  Testament  prophets  with  new 
power,  and  has  not  touched  any  essential  truth  as 
revealed  by  God  in  Christ. 

The  second  reason  why  there  is  so  much  prejudice 
against  the  higher  critics  is  the  failure  of  ultra-conserv¬ 
ative  books  and  religious  papers  to  distinguish  between 
different  schools  of  critics.  For  example,  often  no 
distinction  is  made  between  iconoclastic  writers  who  are 
hostile  to  the  Bible,  and  the  Christian  scholars  of  the 
believing  school  of  critics.  Time  and  again  will  one  see 
the  higher  critics  represented  as  secret  enemies  of  the 
Bible  and  of  the  Christian  religion,  doing  their  deadly 
work  within  the  Church,  and  thus  comparing  unfavora¬ 
bly  with  Paine  and  Ingersoll,  who  at  least  had  the  hon¬ 
esty,  so  it  is  said,  to  stay  out  of  the  Church.  I  have 
read  Paine  and  Ingersoll,  and  while  I  admire  their 
courage  I  can  only  say  that  to  compare  these  sciolists, 
who  had  not  a  spark  of  Biblical  scholarship,  and  who 
attacked  the  Bible  only  for  the  purpose  of  discrediting 
it — to  compare  these  men  with  such  scholars  as  David¬ 
son  and  Driver  and  Adam  Smith  and  a  host  of  others 
like  them,  is  little  less  than  a  disgrace.  It  shows  inex¬ 
cusable  ignorance  of  the  Christian  spirit  and  fine  con¬ 
structive  work  of  the  best  Biblical  critics. 

Lastly,  one  rarely  finds  in  the  conservative  religious 
press  a  fair  discussion  of  the  newer  views.  The  evi¬ 
dence  and  arguments  supporting  them  are  never  given. 
Simply  on  the  ground  that  modern  views  conflict  with 
traditional  views,  it  is  assumed  that  the  former  are 
wrong.  This  policy  may  keep  a  Church  doctrinally 


EVOL  UEION  and  PRESB  Y T ERIANI SM  1 09 


“safe”  and  “sound,”  but  it  also  keeps  it  mentally 
enfeebled  so  far  as  any  intelligent  discussion  of  Biblical 
and  religious  problems  is  concerned. 

What  we  need  in  this  whole  matter  is  such  a  deep 
faith  in  the  religion  of  Christ,  and  in  truth,  as  will 
forever  emancipate  us  from  this  short-sighted  policy 
of  timidity,  evasion,  and  suppression. 


EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM  1 1 1 


APPENDIX  G. 

Our  Church  places  its  theological  students  in  a  cruel 
position.  They  are  instructed  in  an  exceedingly  elab¬ 
orate  creed,  parts  of  which  it  is  simply  impossible  to 
reconcile  with  present-day  conceptions  of  truth  and 
justice.  At  the  end  of  three  years  these  students,  to 
enter  the  Presbyterian  ministry  at  all,  must  take  a  vow 
that  binds  them  to  this  elaborate  confession.  No 
matter  what  doubt  or  misgiving  they  may  feel,  this 
rigid  vow  is  the  one  door-way  into  the  Presbyterian 
ministry.  Besides  assent  to  this  creed,  ministers  are 
supposed  to  be  loyal  to  certain  views  of  their  Church 
that  are  extra-confessional. 

A  little  reflection  will  make  it  clear  to  any  intelligent 
man  that  a  young  student  cannot,  after  only  three 
years  of  study,  know  what  his  real  theology  is;  for  a 
man’s  theology,  if  it  is  truly  his  own,  is  the  precipitate 
of  continuous  and  deep  thinking  about  God  and  man 
and  nature  in  their  inter-relationships.  But  such 
thinking  requires  years  of  reading  and  observation  and 
experience.  A  man’s  theology  grows  with  his  growth, 
often  changing  profoundly  with  his  increasing  knowl¬ 
edge  of  life.  It  is  plain,  therefore,  that  an  inexperi¬ 
enced  seminary  graduate,  when  called  upon  to  give  an 
ex  animo  assent  to  a  system  of  theology  that  antedates 
many  of  the  presuppositions  of  modern  thought,  is 
really  in  no  position  either  to  affirm  or  to  deny  its 
truth;  yet  if  afterwards  he  ever  dissents  from  parts  of 
it,  he  is  accused  of  dishonesty  in  violating  his  ordination 
vow.  But  what  about  the  ethics  of  a  procedure  that 
puts  young  men  in  such  a  position? 

Dr.  Rainy,  in  a  very  suggestive  but  rather  subtle 
and  indecisive  chapter  on  “Creeds,”  has  this  to  say 
of  the  dangers  of  subscription  to  them:  “Confessions, 
as  I  believe,  are  practically  indispensable  to  the  Church. 
They  confer  also  most  important  benefits  on  those 
who  are  called  to  accept  them,  first  by  the  guidance 


1 1 2  EVOL UTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


which  they  supply,  and  secondly  by  the  decision  and 
precision  which  the  necessity  of  reckoning  with  them 
brings  into  men’s  views.  But  they  do  unquestionably 
tend,  and  they  may  sometimes  powerfully  tend,  to 
bias  men’s  minds  with  reference  to  the  single-eyed 
investigation  of  truth.  On  this  point,  it  is  quite  truly 
said  by  opponents  of  confessions,  that  they  operate 
not  so  often  by  disposing  a  man  to  conceal  his  formed 
opinions,  but  rather  by  disposing  him  to  avoid  frank 
and  perfectly  sincere  investigation  when  doubts  or 
questions  arise  which,  as  he  foresees,  might  bring  him 
into  collision  with  confessional  teaching.  He  is 
tempted  to  form  a  habit  of  undue  deference  to  the 
human  document,  to  the  consent  which  it  expresses, 
and  the  antiquity  which  invests  it.  Fie  is  tempted  to 
let  himself  be  paralyzed  with  reference  to  every  move¬ 
ment  that  might  eventually  lead  him  out  of  the  road 
which  human  hands  have  mapped  out  for  him.”1 

Now  men  of  real  intelligence  are  not  “opponents 
of  confessions,”  to  use  Dr.  Rainy’s  phrase;  but  they 
may  be  opponents  of  the  abuse  of  confessions.  Pres¬ 
byterian  ministers  should  know  Calvinism  in  all  its 
doctrinal  details  and  throughout  its  history.  It  is  part 
of  their  historic  inheritance.  It  was  a  great  system 
and  exerted  a  profound  and  far-reaching  influence  not 
only  on  religious,  but  on  social  and  political  life  as 
well.  Our  debt  to  it  is  incalculable.  But  to  bind 
young  men  of  this  century  to  an  iron-clad  theological 
system  of  the  16th  and  17th  centuries  is  to  tempt  them 
to  disloyalty  to  the  thing  that  constitutes  the  very  soul 
of  Calvinism:  namely,  the  sovereignty  of  God  over 
reason  and  conscience — a  sovereignty  that  makes  love 
of  truth,  which  is  the  mind’s  love  of  God,  and  the  pre¬ 
servation  of  one’s  moral  and  intellectual  integrity  to 
be  among  the  highest  of  religious  duties. 

I  have  spoken  of  distinctive  doctrinal  Calvinism  as 

1  Delivery  and  Development  of  Christian  Doctrine ,  p.  255.  T.  &  T.  Clark,  Edin¬ 
burgh.  1874. 


EVOL  UP  I  ON  and  PRESS YPERIANISM  1 1 3 


being  in  part  obsolescent.  Do  the  facts  bear  out  such 
a  verdict?  Dr.  Williston  Walker,  Professor  of  Eccle¬ 
siastical  History  in  Yale  University  and  author  of  the 
best  short  life  of  Calvin,  writing  with  both  sympathy 
and  discrimination,  says:  “In  Calvin’s  exposition  the 
theology  of  the  Reformation  age  rose  to  a  clearness 
and  dignity  of  statement  and  a  logical  precision  of 
definition  that  have  never  been  surpassed.  A  logician 
of  critical  acumen,  a  lawyer  by  training,  a  master  of 
Latin  and  of  French  expression,  a  humanist,  a  student 
of  history  and  of  Christian  antiquity,  Calvin  brought 
to  the  service  of  Christian  theology  gifts  which  must 
always  make  the  Institutes  a  classic  presentation  of 
doctrine.  But  to  recognize  the  transcendent  qualities 
of  his  work  is  by  no  means  to  assert  its  perpetuity. 
His  system  has  been  no  exception  to  the  general  rule 
of  modification  and  supersession  which  seems  essential 
to  all  progress  even  in  the  apprehension  of  the  deepest 
of  Christian  verities.  Calvin’s  system  has  stood  the 
test  of  time  better  than  most  expositions  of  religious 
truth;  but  it  has  suffered  a  general  attrition,  and 
though  the  degrees  in  which  its  various  aspects  are 
now  rejected  are  very  unequal,  it  is  nowhere  held  in 
its  pristine  integrity;  while  the  larger  part  of  the 
Protestant  world,  even  in  the  churches  which  most 
honour  his  memory,  has  turned  far  aside  from  it.”1 

Professor  Walker’s  opinion  as  to  the  present  status 
of  distinctive  doctrinal  Calvinism  finds  confirmation, 
if  any  is  needed,  in  the  not  very  optimistic  view  of 
Dr.  B.  B.  Warfield  (1851-1921),  late  professor  of  The¬ 
ology  in  Princeton  Theological  Seminary.  Dr.  War- 
field  was  probably  the  most  learned  and  most  consist¬ 
ent  of  recent  day  doctrinal  Calvinists.  He  says:  “It 
must  be  confessed  that  the  fortunes  of  Calvinism  in 
general  are  not  at  present  at  their  flood.  In  America, 
to  be  sure,  the  controversies  of  the  earlier  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  compacted  a  body  of  Calvinistic 


1  John  Calvin ,  p.  424.  G.  P.  Putnam’s  Sons.  1906. 


1 14  EVOLUTION  and  PRESBYTERIANISM 


thought  which  gives  way  but  slowly:  and  the  influence 
of  the  great  theologians  who  adorned  the  churches 
during  that  period  is  still  felt ....  Even  in  Scotland  there 
has  been  a  remarkable  decline  in  strictness  of  construc¬ 
tion  ever  since  the  days  of  William  Cunningham  [died 
1861]  and  Thomas  J.  Crawford  [died  1876].”1  In 
America  it  “gives  way  but  slowly.”  But  it  gives  way; 
and  the  reason  is  that  the  Calvinistic  intelligence, 
functioning  in  the  20th  century,  finds  no  adequate 
expression  in  the  Five  Points.2  “Men  do  not  put 
new  wine  into  old  wineskins.”  If  John  Calvin  were 
living  today,  he  would  still  be  a  humanist  and  a  dis¬ 
ciple  of  the  new  learning — a  child  of  the  renaissance 
of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Presbyterians  would  understand  the  necessity  of 
reforming  parts  of  our  theology,  if  they  knew  what 
doctrinal  Calvinism  really  is;  but  not  one  in  a  hundred 
does  know.  I  have  before  me  a  “Short  Catechism  for 
Young  Children,”  written  by  a  Scotch  Presbyterian 
in  the  18th  century  (i*;64)  and  printed  in  the  United 
States  since  1900.  In  it  is  the  following: 

O.  Does  your  wicked  heart  make  all  your  thoughts ,  words,  and 
actions  sinful? 

A.  Yes,  I  do  nothing  but  sin. 

O.  What  is  original  sin? 

A.  It  is  that  sin  in  which  I  was  conceived  and  born. 

Q.  Doth  original  sin  wholly  defile  you,  and  is  it  sufiicient  to  send 
you  to  hell,  though  you  had  no  other  sin? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  What  are  you  then  by  nature? 

A.  I  am  an  enemy  to  God,  a  child  of  Satan,  and  an  heir  of  hell. 

That  is  a  bit  of  distinctive  doctrinal  Calvinism.  Con¬ 
trast  such  a  morbid  and  gloomy  view  of  child  nature 
with  the  wholesome  sunshine  of  the  following: 

1  The  New  Schaff-Herzog  Encyclopedia  of  Religious  Knowledge ,  article  “Calvinism.” 
Funk  &  Wagnalls  Co.  1908. 

2  Calvinism  “laid  a  profound  emphasis,”  says  Professor  Walker,  “on  Christian 
intelligence.  Its  appeal  was  primarily  to  the  intellect,  and  it  has  trained  a  sturdy 
race  of  thinkers  on  the  problems  of  the  faith  wherever  it  has  gone.  It  has  been 
the  foe  of  popular  ignorance,  and  of  shallow,  emotional,  or  sentimental  views  of 
Christian  truth.”  ( Life  of  Calvin,  p.  428).  On  the  problems  of  the  faith  today 
we  are  training  a  race  of  non-thinkers. 


E  VOL  UP  ION  and  PRES B  YT ERIANI SM  1 1 5 


And  they  were  bringing  unto  him  little  children,  that  he  should 
touch  them:  and  the  disciples  rebuked  them.  But  when  Jesus 
saw’  it,  he  wras  moved  with  indignation,  and  said  unto  them,  Suffer 
the  little  children  to  come  unto  me;  forbid  them  not:  for  to  such 
belongeth  the  kingdom  of  God.  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  Whosoever 
shall  not  receive  the  kingdom  of  God  as  a  little  child,  he  shall  in 
no  wise  enter  therein.  And  he  took  them  in  his  arms,  and  blessed 
them,  laying  his  hands  upon  them.  (Mark  10:13-16,  Aim.  R.V.) 


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